Signal has started rolling out Signal Login, an optional registration method that allows users to create a Signal account without providing a phone number. The feature will be rolled out first on Android and will come to iOS later.
As we previously reported, Signal Login is not a free alternative registration method. Signal requires users who choose to register without a phone number to make a one-time payment. The price at launch is $2.99 / € 3.49, although this may vary by region and currency.
Interesting how Deltachat and Jabber, both decentralized encrypted messaging apps (as opposed to Signal, which is centralized), don’t even require an email to create an account, let alone a phone number or payment.
Both of those probably also have a small fraction of the users of Signal, at least at this moment.
Privacy-wise: DeltaChat is cool but it lacks forward secrecy for now and the foreseeable future, and XMPP is a newbie-excluding mess (for example, encrypted group chats require every user to authenticate every other user)
Forward secrecy protects against intercepting now and decrypting later when you get access to the users private key: this is only possible on delta chat if you get access to the client database at which point you can read all undeleted messages anyway. (On Signal even deleted messages!)
Or the server(s), no? It’s trivially easy to archive, filter by account, and then decrypt if the one key has been found
Change has to start somewhere, just like Lemmy/Piefed has a fraction of the users of Reddit :)
That may or may not be an issue depending on the threat model of the individual. Someone that suspects a state actor may be surveilling them? They’d likely want something more secure (though I personally wouldn’t trust Signal in that scenario either due to their centralized nature, which makes them an easy target for state actors).
For someone just wanting a group chat with friends/family that they don’t want being used for AI training or sold to ad companies to build a profile on them? Deltachat is more than secure enough, and certainly better than the corporate owned options they likely already use.
I haven’t needed to authenticate anything manually in my experience in the XMPP apps I’ve used. I just enable OMEMO encryption in the chat I’m in, and as long as the other participants also have that option enabled, it usually just works, and they can read my messages. Its certainly worked better and more smoothly than Matrix’s encrypted chats, which consistently had issues with messages not decrypting.
The main problem with XMPP (well for me anyway) is that the implementation of OMEMO that 99% of the apps use is woefully out of date, and Conversations (and their ilk) seem to actively resist updating because unless EVERYONE does it at the same time it will break interoperability.
The second problem for me is the ease of use, I’d have to physically set up accts for literally all my contacts on Jabber (everyone I know is stupid [it’s really just learned helplessness and it pisses me off to no end]), but on Delta I can legit say “here, click link” and it’ll bring up their app store on DC, then they DL and make an acct and then I say “click the link again” and they’re directly connected to me, done. So much easier. And then next time I see them I can say “hey give me your phone I’m gonna do stuff to your Delta acct” and I can add relays and create a backup for them, but at least we can get started easier.
Besides, they are working on forward secrecy afaik, and they’re one of the only teams making these apps that seems to acknowledge metadata’s existence, honestly they seem like one of the best options all things considered. Sure if your threat model is the US gov then maybe not, but better not use Intel or AMD or any android (incl Graphene, and I’m a user myself) or iphone then. Carrier pigeons maybe.
The whole ‘OMEMO is out of date’ thing started with Soatok’s blog, however what is less known is that blogger removed a response in the comments from an OMEMO developer who clarified some things (you can it read here), which personally I think was rather odd/bad faith of them to do.
According to that response, there’s nothing really wrong with the older OMEMO 0.3.0, as the developer considers it a stable standard that clients can safely implement, while the newer versions are basically public beta releases that are working toward a stable ‘OMEMO 2’ standard that can eventually replace 0.3.0, and be stable enough for all XMPP apps to implement at once, hence why most apps are remaining on the older version.
I absolutely agree that Deltachat has by far a smoother onboarding process compared to XMPP, and I think for most people, Delta is probably the better option.
Where XMPP shines is if someone needs access to more discord-like features, which is where the the Movim XMPP client (a web app that works across all platforms, Desktop and Mobile) does well, as it was able to use XMPP to have Discord-like servers with text and group voice chat rooms, as well as screensharing. It works quite well for the most part. There is still definitely some UX oddities in Movim that can add some friction, but the dev is quite open to suggestions for improvements, and it’s come a long way in recent months (the discord-like features for example were added just this year).
Good to know, thanks!
I’m trying, but nobody has messaged me yet (see my profile, I’ve had it there for a while!) On the bright side, I guess I’ve enjoyed a lack of spam or other nonsense through sheer obscurity.
Maybe, although I would argue that if the server is a concern already (E2EE makes it one!) then forward secrecy would be necessary to prevent a single key from leaking the group chat in question. And toward secrecy is no longer a new technology thanks to Signal.
I’m hanging onto DeltaChat with the hope they implement it as soon as PGP does.
I’m unfamiliar with the current state of the ecosystem, but… That’s kind of the problem with it too, right? There is no standard, and unlike even Lemmy, the mishmash leads to user-unfriendliness. Specifically I was thinking of this comment , which may not be relevant to your client:
Regarding attracting users, somebody else noted
I definitely don’t want XMPP to fail, but it seems that after years, it’s all too little too late. That one, I’m not holding my breath on. (DeltaChat, I am.)
I agree that XMPP has some UX problems that some clients have yet to solve, and that is one area where Deltachat is very much ahead.
A good solution to this issue would be to exclusively recommend the Movim client.
Due to it being a web app, it’s compatible across all platforms (any desktop or mobile device regardless of OS), and is the only client that has so far successfully implemented a slew of advanced features that Deltachat does not have, such as Discord-like channels with text and group voice chat rooms, as well as screensharing with audio (I think only on Chromium based browsers so far, as it’s still quite a new feature).
It still has some UX issues it needs to work on that will cause some friction with normies compared to Deltachat (a big one is that notifications don’t work reliably on mobile yet), but the dev is very open to suggestions of how to improve it, and is very active in developing it (the discord-like features were all implemented just a few months ago). I think it may give XMPP a fighting chance for the future.