Comparison of messengers

You can find here a nice comparison sheet of different “secure” messengers. Very interesting read for me!

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Threema is really good. I believe they should open things up a little bit. Esp. the clients.

Die verrückte Welt der Messenger

That seems to be two years old, and is at least not correct for current Riot.

I’m mostly interested in Messengers that also do secure video calls. So far, Signal has been working very elegantly, but is getting controversial in its recent updates.

Also I would like to have some kind of control regarding which servers are used to store/convey messages and user details. In that respect I like the way aTalk works, using public XMPP servers like hot-chilli.eu, which does not even require a phone no. or SIM. It is not currently available to Apple users though.

There also seem to be messengers that can do without a server (Briar?), but that is maybe a level of privacy above what is needed by the casual user.

I am testing https://getsession.org/ lately, which is a fork of signal but is build on top of onion routing and Dynamically generated IDs (like briar). They plan to migrate later to the LokiNet approach (since session is a loki project).
This should fix nearly all the red marked problems with Signal. And my first tests are really promising!

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You can start Jitsi sessions from Riot (assuming p2p for e2ee) though I’ve not done it.

You can use Jitsi (https://meet.jit.si) if you just want video calls. They are implementing e2e encryption as stated in https://jitsi.org/blog/e2ee/. This post was published in April this year.

I run my own instance, I control the server, and use it just for family and friends. They trust me of course. :slight_smile:

But if you are interested in the whole package, you can host your own set with Matrix, Riot and Jitsi. With Matrix you can use Riot as a phone app or a website. They both work for text, audio and video.

There’s a fine tutorial by Matthew Hodgson, Matrix co-founder, in https://youtu.be/dDddKmdLEdg

EDIT: I forgot to say that the e2e encryption is still beta but you already can see it working.

In the main Jitsi instance, you’ll see it available but for a home installation you must first go to chrome://flags and enable the option Experimental Web Platform features.

Only after this step, the option End to End Encryption will be shown. Of course, if your Jitsi installation is updated to the last version.

Google is developing this feature so it’s possible to use it on Chrome. I could not find a way to use it on Firefox.

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Hi so what is a good alternative to whatsapp? one that does voice, i looked at session but i think it is text based messenger only?

i really wanted Jami to work but i think that one may have too many issues, and now bliss launcher stops working when attempting to run Jami

Requirements for me are as follows,

it should not require an e-mail or telephone number,

it should work on iphone amd /e/os

it should be able to send video clips

it should have end to end encyrption

the company behind it should be dedicated to privacy and open source ( tho not necessary)

I am familiar with the regular Jisti i use it as my SIP phone intreface on pc, tho have not tried jisti meet yet, is there any other ones? last year Jisti meet had a privacy rating of 3 out of 10 tho now if u search the app store the privacy rating is “Not Available”

Forget the Phone number part and Signal would be the perfect alternative.

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Monal or ChatSecure are xmpp alternatives for apple users.

I just tried Riot on /e/OS, sad to say it did not work for me :frowning:

I downloaded, installed, signed in thru the app which worked at the time it, Riot loaded up fine afterthe sign up.,then downloaded Riot for PC signed up and launched it there. From the android i tried seaching for my PC user ID , it would not find it…

I then searched for my android matrix username through the Riot PC version for windows and found it, typed on PC a test message to the andorid running Riot with /e/OS. No messages made it thru, and no messages appeared on the andorid screen, The PC side was working fine showed test text had gone through.

I then thought to close the Riot app on the /e/OS android and restart the Riot app… only to have the Riot logo stuck in a continous loop flashing the Riot logo in various colors… hmm… time to restart the phone itself i thought,

Restarted phone, launched Riot only to find the Logo again stuck on a continious loop flashing the logo of Riot in various colors again…

Then thought perhaps i`ll uninstall the app and re-download it it, so tried that re-installed it… re-entered my login details and once again flashing Riot logo stuck…wont load.!!

Anyone had success in running Riot on /e/OS?

Ok just tried RIot again the following day, suddenly it loaded up straight away and seems to be working!
Perhaps the matrix server was down…

I am still testing it with PC to /e/OS and vice versa, seems ok so far, did a test call from the Riot App on phone to the Riot App on PC and could hear myself.

I dont know how to host my own server or if i wish to, as i dont have a website to host from so i will have to stick the the default matrix server, I am unsure how reliable this Riot App is considering it didnt work at all yesterday and now today it suddenly working… not sure if should convince family to try it and then suddenly not work. i`ll have to test it some more, but seems to work today,

I think that may be happening if I read correctly.

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have a look on my Post Comparison of messengers

This would be nice, i wouldnt want my telephone number as a sign up as; isnt your phone number the “Ultimate Tracker”.
Did a quick download of the signal app to see, currently still wants a phone number, yeh the article says in the long run they will drop phone numbers, so we shall see when they actually implement it.

I installed Session to try it, looks great however it does not have the ability to make voice calls, so it not for me. Also max file size for attachment is 10mb which is enough for most people maybe. Riot has a 100mb maximum file size, and Jami (when it works) i can send unlimited maximum file size. I am not sure but i think signal has 100mb file size maximum also for file attatchments.

Well, I use the Riot app from Aurora Store (I never use the /e/ Apps) because the version is more recent than F-Droid’s.
The loop when you launch the app may occur if the connection to the server is leggy. Since the main matrix server is overused perhaps it could have being hard to connect. I use my own instance so it’s much cleaner, only some people use it.
As I have my own server, I do not use the Riot desktop but instead the Riot web so I can reach it from anywhere.
The Riot app works just fine with my Moto G 2014 and it’s able to send text, files, audio and video. Also it does audio and video calls.
Again, the server must be working fine for you to have a good experience.

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I’ve also been trying Session - I have Silence, Signal, Wire and Wickr all installed - so I wanted to see what a really anonymous messenger was like - no phone number (Silence, Signal) or any identifier like an email (Wire, Wickr) needed - just the 50+ character gibberish identifier. Tricky part is getting that to someone securely.

So far? A bit flaky, but seems to be coming around. Message reliability has been an issue. Some tweaks in MicroG have helped to increase that. Not fully all there yet in its features, but maturing.

Yes, I hope they keep going on with Session development. It’s promising. Which is the best according to your user experience? I like Signal.