this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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Privacy

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[–] JustMarkov@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Let's be honest, Signal is not perfect either:

  • It requires your phone number
  • It has had some suspicious funding sources
    (UPD: It was funded by CIA)
    (UPD2: Here I will quote www.securemessagingapps.com:

This matters because “money talks”, as the saying goes. If the company or person behind the money is likely to have reason not to protect customers’ privacy, it’s important to know. This could be indicative of the company not doing as they say (Google, Whatsapp, for example) or changing their mind once they’ve onboarded enough customers from whom they can make money.

~~(I'm gonna find sources for the last two statements a bit later to not be unsubstantiated)~~
Done.

Although, we all can agree, that Signal is still better than Telegram, or WhatsApp, or Threema, or whatever.
Still, we probably want to look at the better alternatives, like Simplex or Session.

[–] refalo@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago

It has had some suspicious funding sources

Wait until you find out where computers, the Internet, GPS, weather satellites and Tor came from.

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

suspicious funding

Which lines of its libre software source code are malicious?

requires your phone number

It's centralised

[–] JustMarkov@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which lines of its libre software source code are malicious?

It's not about code, but about funding.

It's centralised

Yes, and it's the downside, no matter how you look at it.

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

So, which malicious lines of libre software source code have been funded? This is how we stop FUD. Don't let them derail us.

[–] JustMarkov@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't get me wrong. As far as we know, no malicious code have been funded. The very fact that the Signal was sponsored by the CIA is suspicious (maybe I used some incorrect words, sorry if so). Of course, it's totally up to you whether you think that fact is sus or not.

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

It's not. Our devices run software, not funding.

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
  • It requires your phone number

Not anymore, right? Or does it still need your number for signing up?

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 year ago

Just to sign up

[–] Numberone@startrek.website -5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Signal no longer requires a phone number. You can now create an account. Not sure if that helps your outlook on it, but yeah. It was a fairly recent update that this was rolled out.

Edit: being told we still do need numbers to register. I haven't gotten a new phone since well before the change was made, so I haven't actually created an account and gone through the process. It looks like I misinterpreted what was going on when I read the changelog.

[–] JustMarkov@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's not true. A phone number is still required to register, you can just set it not to be public.

Source: I just tried to register and it asked for my phone number.