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I spent awhile today looking at alternatives to WhatsApp, which I refuse to use, but which has colonized our village. In our family we use Telegram, which I made the mistake of advocating as an alternative to WhatsApp several years ago. It works very well, but it's not what I would advocate today. But what would I recommend? XMPP seems to be a mixed bag, with different levels of support depending upon where it is hosted. Matrix looks promising and appears to have some decent clients. But checking out the Matrix how-to on Disroot, the use of encryption over Matrix seems rather discouraging:
Few things to be aware of when using Encryption :
Encryption keys are created per device! This means you won't be able to read history of the conversation if you joined in at later stage with your device (eg. second laptop)
If you logout, or your browser (if using browser to connect) closes the session, your keys will be lost and newly created ones upon login will not be able to read history. This makes sense as in case your account is compromised, the history of your encrypted chats won't be view-able. We recommend therefore to use Riot mobile and native desktop versions and never hit the logout button (unless you want to lose your encrypted room history).
This is not something I could suggest for ordinary mortals - the same ones that can only use passwords as long as they have one password for everything, based on the names of their grandchildren. It seems to me that, as with email, full encryption can be made to work well and in a foolproof way only with a central server (such as ProtonMail), but remains inaccessible for others who can't go through the motions of installing and using PGP (and since the recent scare, EFF is still saying that should be used only in a limited way). Therefore, looking at the alternatives, I think I will be telling people that if they want encrypted messaging, they should go with Signal. Threema looks good, but most people won't be willing to pay the monthly subscription fee.
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Telegram continues to be OK, from my point of view, for the exchange of our baby pictures and setting times for weekend family meet-ups. That's basically all we use it for, and I don't think Telegram is leaking that information to data harvesters or governments. But in my office staff everyone is using WhatsApp except me, and I'm missing out on important messages from our community, because more and more people are preferring that to the email list etc. So I'm in the role of the village Luddite that refuses to move with the times / accept reality, whatever. No matter, but it makes me feel good when I can give a reasonable explanation and recommend something better. "Better" can't be something with worse privacy than WhatsApp, and it has to be easy to use and, unfortunately, free, so Signal is the available option. Even if we don't like it because it's centralized and owned by some company, etc.
Regarding email, if I ever need to exchange really confidential information, I would get the other person to use Protonmail or Tutanota. I have an account on Protonmail, but don't use use it because it doesn't work with IMAP or POP, and occasionally I like to download everything in order to save online server space.
One-time-pad sounds like fun, for playing at being secret agents; but I hope we don't really have to resort to that!
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There's currently a thread on the same topic here (post by Aral Balkan)Aral Balkan (@aral@mastodon.ar.al) (Not sure if I'm referencing this properly)
Got my parents to start using Wire & Signal today. Didn't set anything up for them, just asked them to install from the App Store. They were up & running in minutes. They're in their 70s. Your argument that the alternatives are difficult to use is null and void.
#securemessaging
hosh
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