Privacy

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Why Signal over Jabber/XMPP? (piefed.world)

submitted 1 day ago by TurkeyDurkey@piefed.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Over the past few years I have gone through a bunch of different apps and protocols to find the best one for "securely" communicating with my family and friends.

I ended up with the amazing XMPP protocol and my family/friends frequently use its clients to contact me.

Monal for IOS and Cheogram/Conversations/Quicksy for Android. The android app I install depends on if I can get F-Droid on their phone or not.

It's been great with OMEMO encryption and the clients/apps available for XMPP. But sometimes I have issues introducing people to it.

Jabber (friendly name for xmpp) sounds silly to say. The clients all have weird names. And after trying the Signal mobile app it feels more focused than what anyone in the XMPP community has whipped up.

But the capabilities of XMPP makes it better.

Signal Cons (immediete)

Centralized
Single app
Phone numbers

XMPP/Jabber Cons

Picking server
Apps are sort of less friendly

What really scares me about Signal is the centralization. Any nerd can easily host an XMPP server these days. But Signal from what I've heard really wants us to use their server.

If XMPP gets more attention I'm sure we can get people supporting projects and creating better apps.

I keep seeing people recommended Signal instead.

This is a bit of a tired ramble. What I wanna know is why anyone is preferring Signal over XMPP apps. I assume it might be not knowing about it. Tell me what you use to message people.

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[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

With some spit and polish, I think that SimpleX could actually be very similar in that regard.

[–] notarobot@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago

I wouldn't recommend simplex just yet because contacts are tied to servers. If the server you are using with a contact for down, you lose the contract

[–] rirus@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Its even simpler and more secure and privacy friendly. But the battery usage...

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I have not noticed it causing a significant hit to my battery usage, but maybe I just am lucky or something.

[–] rirus@feddit.org 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

In how many larger groups are you and which notification style do you use?

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago

I'm in two large groups and quite a number of smaller ones.

For the most part, I have notifications muted on most things, except for a couple of very small groups that don't get chats often.

I'm not sure exactly what notification style I'm using because I can't remember, but I do know that I do not have Google Play Services or Google Apps of any sort.