Encrypted messaging recommendations.

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I'm in one room with 1,500 people and it uses about 7% of my battery. Mind you, that is a lot for a messenger. But I can deal with that.

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I just moved to Signal and have convinced most of my family and many friends to join. It is very secure, non-profit and doesn't share much personal data (the least of the main messaging services) and most of my luddite family has been able to figure it out.

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Deltachat 100%

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Appreciate the reply, but I don't mind some proprietary code. There are very few reviews of open code by respected bodies (I'm writing in generality here). I'm certainly not qualified to review code. Just being open is only the beginning of the journey.

As we've seen with some open software recently there are some active hackers successfully targeting open software because it is open. Such exploits are not always discovered in good time.

https://thenewstack.io/why-so-much-open-source-software-is-vulnerable-to-hackers/

https://thehackernews.com/2025/01/github-desktop-vulnerability-risks.html

Etc etc.

I place store by the warrant responses and action of government entities against some software.

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Never heard of Langis before

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Thanks. You're not wrong, and I appreciate the well-written response. Some might say you are defending/advocating proprietary software with this stance, but I don't think there is a clear answer either way that applies to every circumstance.

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Matrix, xmpp, simplex. Do not use Signal or any service with centralized servers hosted in a 5 eyes country.

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It seems like I’m not being clear. The goal is to get 100% on to encrypted chat.

Right now in America, about sixty percent of the phones are running ios. ios has imessage by default. The application which those people use to do imessage is called messages (very unconfusing!) and also does texts. When you’re using imessage in messages the text bubbles are blue, rcs and sms are green. Imessage is an encrypted chat.

If a person running android wants to use imessage they need to bridge it to their phone from a mac (messages and imessage are available on mac) using the bluebubbles application.

So three out of five of the people you know are already using encrypted chat. If you, the op, can get on their level then you only have to convince the other two to use some other chat thing that they can do. Maybe signal or something.

So the cost of running a mac computer as a bridge so you can use imessage through the bluebubbles android app is for you, the op, to get on the encrypted chat application those three out of five people are already on. You’d still need to use xmpp or something for everyone else but now you only need to worry about two out of five people.

I’m pretty poor and a hundred bucks isn’t a terrible price to pay for being sixty percent there. If I could have done that with pgp back in the day (when a hundred bucks was worth something!) I would have jumped at the chance.

Just avoiding having to explain to people that email was transmitted in plaintext and what that meant and not either have to talk them down from taking a pickaxe to their computer or convince them that it doesn’t matter that they have nothing to hide would have been worth it back then.

It’s also a completely hypothetical cost that assumes you don’t just stumble into an old mac and won’t trade your phone in for one running ios to save that cash.

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Yeah, I get your point. I just was pointing out that iPhone users would want to install some messenger for Android family members anyway - so that they don't get charged per each little message (although I've heard that unlimited SMS is common in the US), and have normal-quality media. Or you mean that they'd be still reluctant to install one more app, while the one they already use is bad, like Whatsapp? If we're trusting proprietary software anyway - why trust iMessage over Whatsapp?

Also I doubt a Huawei that cost $100 new would be traded for any iPhone anywhere, lol

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Recommending to friends and family means Signal. With a phone number they can start using the gold standard for encryption from the get go.

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Yeah per text charges are really uncommon in the anglosphere, although the pay as you go carriers and plans have data limits.

If you’re on contract or renewing contract with an American carrier they’ll usually take literally any phone you have in trade for their lowest cost ios or android device, your choice. I took them up on it several years ago because the gimmie device was the only physically small iphone at the time. Sometimes it adds a couple of bucks to your monthly bill if you pick one with a little more storage or whatever but that amounts to them selling you the phone for fifty bucks or so over two years.

Hell, usually if you’re signing up for a new account they’ll offer some android and ios phones for free to get you on contract.

Half of each person is getting them to use encrypted chat with you one on one and half is getting the group chats to use it. If you can knock out half the battle most of the time then you should do it.

In my experience ios and android users are equally open/resistant to using some new thing.

I recognize that for a particular type of threat model or ideology all proprietary software amounts to the same level of vulnerability. The op only asked about encrypted chat. The implication that I picked up on and responded to was that the op is in America or concerned about American cell network compromises and wanted to address that.

That’s a real simple threat to get past, just go to whatever is encrypted that the most people use.

Most people use imessage, so that’s what I suggested.

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Thank-you for your kindness. And it is really kind!

I'm old so my view of prop software is rooted in the change of early Microsoft et al bringing real change to the dubious parasitic entities that they are today. I watched it slowly happen and have been delighted and contributing in a small way with Linux since the turn of the century.

RedHat had been sold to the 'no-one ever got fired for buying IBM' (I still can't believe that they believed that that was a winning slogan). In these trying times the love for open source isn't translating into enough cash; average people are stretched.

I can't wait for the leaders in my country to stop pandering to the world's oligarchs and serve the people that elected them.

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Ah, so they normally use SMS between the ecosystems? Then understandanle, although that is still weird as hell because the media on SMS is bad quality (and here would also add a lot to the SMS price).

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I'd consider Signal to be the gold standard of secure communications.

You can describe it to them like WhatsApp, except it's private, secure, not Facebook-owned, nonprofit so it can't be bought or sold, etc.

Here's the blog post that I share with my friends comparing Signal to iMessage and WhatsApp when they ask me about it.

It usually answers most of their questions.

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Yeah and even if you’re on an ios with rcs plenty of old android devices just scale the videos down to postage stamp size anyway by default so you get bad looking pictures no matter what.

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Here RCS is not even supported on most carriers, and aapparently on some phone models as well (some Chinaphones I think).

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It’s just as well, rcs in America only has guarantees of features if you’re on the same servers as the other people, so there’s a big split between the Samsung and google rcses with all kinds of weird mixed media stuff if you’re both on gchat or the Samsung fork and nothing but maybe higher resolution pictures if you’re not.

It’s part of why I’m so willing to recommend imessage because for better or worse in America it’s the defacto standard.

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Rolled up scrolls attached to foxes

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Signal and Telegram both require user ID to use their apps. SimpleX-chat does not, zero registration. So if privacy is your number one whish from your messenger than SimpleX is what you're looking for.

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Have it on always on, with small scale friends and family use. Don't find it too draining, updates have improved the battery usage

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Encrypted messaging recommendations.