I have nothing against Signal. I just don’t have access to a phone number right now. I fully intend to use the Signal when I get a number. I know there is no silver bullet, no absolutes in the privacy world but I’m looking for any messengers that are generally considered to be private and secure on Android that I can try to convince my friends and family to use. I have a mid - low threat model, it’s just the thought of giving the Zuck anymore of my family’s data makes my skin crawl.
I like Element.
It’s a matrix client. Polished and nice. It’s ok all the platforms under an Apache license. No phone number required. You’ve got federation on matrix as well, so just sign up on any server.
Polished? No… don‘t bother with element if you want a good user experience. It‘s a buggy mess
Element has come a LONG way during the pandemic. If you haven’t tried it recently, I’d encourage you to give it another shot.
First of all it‘s slow. Like really slow. Sometimes loading a room takes 20 seconds.
Nothing really works reliably. Currently I‘m unable to leave a chat for whatever reason. Sometimes (like twice a week) the encryption just breaks. Every single message gets marked with a red excalmation point, saying that the keys are missing. The app keeps telleing me that I have unread messages even though i‘ve read all messages. I then have to mark every chat as read a couple of times. Sometimes only clearing the cache of the app helps. That happens every day.
There is probably more but that‘s what came to my mind first
Oh yeah…the service has privacy issues too when it comes to meta data. I feel like the bottom line here is, that Matrix/element are not there yet. It‘s very much alpha software that is not suitable for everyday use outside of nerds that enjoy the pain.
It used to be very buggy, but it’s gained a lot of polish recently, especially if you haven’t used it since Spaces were introduced. Sometime before then I think the cross verification/signing user flow for E2E key management also greatly improved with the introduction of QR and emoji based cross-device verification for syncing encryption between existing signed-in sessions to newly signed in devices. The only bug I ever notice these days is the “mark as read” quick action in android notifications being broken on notifications older than a couple hours.
XMPP. It’s an old standard, there are servers you can get an account with or you can host your own. And with OMEMO encryption everything is end to end encrypted.
I’ve heard of Briar. I’ll check it out but I worry it might be a little barebones for my parents.
Simplex, element(or most matrix compatible messengers) session, bchat. If the goal is to get your family to switch over though good luck.
Thank you! XD They’re actually quite open to it which I’m thankful for. My dad has used Signal in the past so he’s cool with it and I’ve been slowly introducing FOSS alternatives to my mom. I got my dad off of Spotify and Mom off of Amazon music using ViMusic. I’m actually quite happy with my parent’s foray into open source life! :D
