[Cryptography] Signal planning no support for plaintext SMS

[Natanael]

Den fre 4 nov. 2022 02:09John Denker via cryptography <
cryptography at metzdowd.com> skrev:

> On 11/1/22 5:45 PM, John Gilmore wrote in part:
>
> > I decided that a Signal Foundation that insisted on grabbing and
> > keeping a copy of every user's contact metadata was not a trustworthy
> > Signal Foundation.
>
> So ... does anybody have suggestions for how to proceed?
>
> There are more than 100 alternatives listed here:
>    https://alternativeto.net/software/signal-private-messenger/
>
> Some comparison charts are here:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_cross-platform_instant_messaging_clients
>
> Some of the apps are open-source.
> Has there been any serious vetting?
>
> Because of network effects (Metcalfe's law, roughly speaking)
> I am attracted to apps that already have a large user base,
> but the largest ones have, ahem, not-so-great provenance and
> not-so-great track records.
>

Everything is essentially one of matrix.org clients (similar to XMPP),
XMPP+OTR clients, Signal forks, Telegram & forks, RetroShare and GNU
Social, P2P / mesh clients like Briar, and then there's all the fringe
projects plus the other centralized proprietary services like Wire.

So basically no other option is simultaneously easy to use even for
novices, secure (enough), not centralized and also developed by known
trustworthy developers.

Element for Matrix is one of the more viable options, but I would not
recommend introducing non-techies to it just yet. There's probably simpler
clients available, but then you need to vet their developers too.
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