cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/privacy/p/1774168/what-is-the-best-private-messaging-app
Hello i am looking for a private messaging app to chat with my family, What would be the best option to use I want it to be decentralized, user-friendly and have good and secure E2EE, must be free as in beer and open source, I have used matrix and didn’t like it because of encryption issues, I am currently using XMPP but I am having issues with image uploads and image downloads, I am considering deltachat and it seems to be the best option, if anyone has any suggestion that is better i would appreciate it.
EDIT: i tried out all the recommndations and simplex was both the best for me and my family liked the UX more than the other ones
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I tried em all, currently using session.
How’d you settle on that one?
- Its funding method is its own, proprietary cryptocurrency
- It still has not, to my knowledge, added PFS back to its encryption after they removed it
- Their software is forks of other people’s stuff, specifically Signal and Monero
They announced they’re working on it recently, but it’s not released yet.
Today, we are announcing Session Protocol V2, a proposed upgrade to the Session Protocol…
Their entire announcement uses future tense for V2 and present tense for V1
Thanks i will look into it, I saw a lot more people recommend deltachat, if you used deltachat what made session better over it and the other messengers? also it uses tor, does that make it slow or is it fast enough? they also removed forward secrecy sometime ago is that a huge problem?
At the time it felt incomplete, my guess is it’s a lot better now.
I see you chose SimpleX. Power to you and your family, that’s a great app.
Keep Briar installed on your phone as plan B. If you’re at risk of internet or power shutdowns Briar lets you create a mesh network through bluetooth or wifi with your family and neighbors, so even if internet is down you can share the app with them and text each other privately. It’s a last resort option for when you can’t rely on anything else.
thanks ill keep that as a backup plan
Something XMPP based.
It’s an open protocol, you can host it yourself, encryption is available.
briar?
Since you’ve said that Signal won’t work for your specific geographic location, perhaps you should give SimpleX a try. There’s some controversy about them introducing cryptomining to support their development or something, but it’s still my backup option if Signal gets taken down.
Also, you don’t need a phone number to sign up, and it was almost as easy to get going as Signal, so it should be doable for most non-techy people.
Thanks, I’ll try it.
There’s no such thing. But I like SimpleX.
If you’re in Iran you should look into p2p messengers like Keet, as there’s no servers to shut down.
I’m waiting for Veilid to exit beta. So much anticipation.
Signal meets your requirements except for the decentralized part. But as you’ve pointed out, the decentralized options also have their own issues on other aspects. So at this point you have to decide for yourself and weigh the options based on what features you prioritize and which ones you’re willing to sacrifice.
I have considered signal but unfortunately it’s blocked in my country iran, they also need phone numbers which they most likely will not accept iranian numbers because of sanctions. but yeah thanks for the recommendation.
That sucks to hear, sorry about that. I hope you find a good solution!
Frankly I wouldn’t trust Signal since their bullshit reasoning for dropping SMS support was “engineering costs”.
SMS is so hard to do (yes, that’s sarcasm) there are free apps that do SMS, because its ALL handled by the OS - you merely read/write the SMS database (it’s been this way since 2015).
I can’t trust an org that lies so blatantly.
Frankly I wouldn’t trust Signal since their bullshit reasoning for dropping SMS support was “engineering costs”.
Where did you hear that?
The announcement that they were discontinuing SMS support (https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/) provides an entirely different reasoning.
I just have a self hosted Nextcloud Chat. Not E2EE but that’s ok since I run the server. Can be used from a browser, keeps scrollback, etc. UI is usable though not great.
The easy answer is Signal, which is good enough for non-tech people to use without much issue. It’s not decentralized, but other than it just works.
I have considered signal but unfortunately it’s blocked in my country iran, they also need phone numbers which they most likely will not accept iranian numbers because of sanctions. but yeah thanks for the recommendation.
I’m far from an expert on this, but from what I understand, the private chat app that would be hardest to block in a situation like this would be Delta Chat. Since it uses email as the underlying transport, it can’t easily be blocked like others that use their own niche transports which can be more easily identified and blocked. To block Delta Chat completely if you’re not using a well-known Delta Chat server for your email, they would need to block all e-mail in and out of your country. At least that’s an argument I’ve read.
