Signal or Viber or WhatsApp

beachhead · 26-03-2025 07:38PM #1

Which is more secure as in private? Whatsappp is controlled by Meta so can't be the same Viber or Signal

fits · 26-03-2025 07:41PM

Viber is Israeli owned. So….

Signal can’t access your messages even if they wished to.

the_amazing_raisin · 26-03-2025 08:51PM

Disclaimer: I have not tried either of the following but was looking into them a few months ago

Apparently if you want fully decentralised and maximum anonymity then Session is the best option

It was originally a fork of Signal but have developed their own protocol

Signal requires some metadata whereas Session requires almost none

The main attraction of Session to me was it's decentralised nature, whereas Signal uses their own servers for message routing

It's worth asking the question of what you want to accomplish as well. If you switch to another provider then you'll need all your contacts to also switch over

It's quite likely you'll have to keep WhatsApp since some companies use it for customer service

Whatsapp also has communities which the others don't really have an equivalent that I know of. There's alternatives to that as well but not really one app that doss everything

beachhead · 27-03-2025 07:27AM

Wasn't Viber developed by 2 ex pat Russians in Israel and since 100% acquired by Rakuten of Japan.

Most customer services seem to be hung up on whatsapp.

I will have a look at session

the_amazing_raisin · 30-03-2025 11:12AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123302406#Comment_123302406

Probably my favourite thing about Session is that it's truly open source, whereas Signal's server code is closed source

It's generally a good sign that developers are willing to put their code to a high level of scrutiny and still be confident it's secure

Before you jump into Session, you should probably consider the whole privacy picture. If you're using Session on a stock Android device then Google will have enough trackers loaded on to destroy any degree of privacy you've gained

Apple is better but still not shy about mining your device for data for their own services

Windows 11 these days seems to be 90% spyware

I'd recommend looking into ways of cutting yourself off from the tech giants. You'll likely end up installing a custom android distro (GrapheneOS is considered most secure but only available for Pixel devices, CalyxOS is another option), closing or locking down your social media and moving your email away from Gmail

You could look up a book called Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzel. He's a former US Marshal so his job was literally to find people. The book is focused on the US but a lot of the digital focused chapters are pretty universal

Another option if you want to go full crazy internet hermit (literally one of my goals in life) you could check out the FUTO wiki

https://wiki.futo.org/wiki/Introduction_to_a_Self_Managed_Life:a_13_hour%26_28_minute_presentation_by_FUTO_software

It's written by Louis Rossmann who's a big right to repair and digital privacy advocate. One advantage of the wiki is he tried to write it in a way that you just follow the steps and it works

To paraphrase the man himself; there's 2 types of suffering; suffering through Windows stealing your data and suffering through getting something to work on Linux. So when I find out how to do something in Linux I hold on to that **** for life, don't care if there's an easier or smarter way, this is what I a know will work

beachhead · 31-03-2025 09:47AM

Shocking

cobham · 03-04-2025 11:21AM

I just had a message pop up on whatsapp about AI mining data. This coincides with chatting to a relative about a course another relative was to work with … and next thing an ad for this obscure course popped up in FB.

beachhead · 03-04-2025 01:02PM

I had a message from Meta yesterday telling me how they were going to help me use their service and mine my information-text,call,data content.Quite transparent about it.