New text/SMS app: Silence or QKSMS?

where did i write it?

I vote for QKSMS:
Dec '18

Much better and more widespread Telegram.
Apr '19

so what do you deduce?

Well you have said that you don’t want /e/ to include Signal as a default app but would like /e/ to include the less secure Telegram & QKSMS as default apps. Nothing to deduce really. I just find it a curious position.

Please lets keep the discussion related to the topic only and avoid personal comments.

@Manoj: ok

/e/: can include any app, it’s important (for me) that the user is free to decide what to keep on his device.

SMS: i receive a few messages a month without the need for encryption. Mainly for alerts from the bank, credit card, 2-factor authentication, etc. … so in receipt: is there anyone who thinks that I can ask the bank or credit card to use Signal and encrypt sms?
I haven’t found a way to transfer SMS messages between Signal and any other SMS app. Instead I can transfer SMS between 2 traditional SMS apps.

Signal: I don’t know the encryption key. So I don’t have control of it. And I don’t have any contacts using Signal. Secure SMS undeliverable. SMS sent in clear, like QKSMS… Secure chat not possible if my contacts don’t use it.
Not easy to convince someone to replace the sms app. simpler to make it clear that they can add a messaging app like Telegram.

Telegram: if I encrypt the communication is at least as secure as Signal. Larger installations (an order of magnitude, 10x): easier to find contacts. More functions than Signal. IMHO, unparalleled. Telegram isn’t less secure than Signal.

I don’t find anything curious about it. I think that everyone can and should be able to decide.

You can use signal-back to convert your Signal backup to an xml file that you can import with SMS Backup & Restore.

2 Likes

thank you very much! (currently i’m using Signal… :joy:)

try to see if it might be of interest to you:

1 Like

Oksms seems pretty good Maybe /e/ can branch off it and have its own SMS and try to explore a “imessage” like feature between e account. I like the encrypted SMS feature with silence but should default when you have a known contact with say e and silence and is offline. Defs not to signal, with @VitTh on this.

Edited: couldn’t find oksms in my initial search didn’t notice Gael in op saying its open source :stuck_out_tongue:

I found that very interesting. Both Signal and Telegram have reasons to be concerned. In the case of Telegram it’s primarily that the E2EE is not used by default and most people won’t fight the inertia and switch it on. So what’s the point of using it? In the case of Signal it’s that US government connection referred to in the link. This is potentially a problem but not yet a proven one. I like both for different reasons but prefer to argue the case for using some sort of E2EE by default. This is why I say Signal over Telegram or SMS. Sadly there is no perfect solution.

1 Like

Fully agree.

Telegram is simply plain text stored on their servers. /e/'s and Gael’s continued enthusiasm for it has left me quite confused. Unless I am missing something big, there is no comparison with Signal which is far superior even if less convenient when it comes to desktop sync/backup.

A killer feature would be if the e cloud had an option to backup the Signal folder.

And regarding the funding source, of course we should pay attention to these things. But it should be done without a tinfoil hat(not implying @television is, his post seems balanced) . Governments can invest in tech because they are interested in using the tech e.g. Tor, AES.

2 Likes

It’s an opportunity for everyone if someone invests in security available to everyone but I must have the encryption keys. Neither Signal nor any government. Otherwise the owner of my data is someone else: no privacy.

In my opinion Signal is not comparable to Telegram neither for diffusion nor for characteristics and use.

Does anyone have the ability to understand if a chat in Telegram should be protected or not?
Encrypting “hi, how are you?” might not be interesting and useful for everyone.

I don’t understand the problem: everyone can choose the app he/she want and encrypt what he/she think is useful to encrypt. It seems very simple to me.

Everthing should be encrypted by default, even just a simple “hi”. If you only encrypt things that should be encrypted but not the rest of you conversation, you make it very simple for the attacker, because she/he knows than what is interesting. If everything is encrypted and like in signal afaik every message with a new key than it is very expensive for the attacker to decrypt everything. Afaik Signal also uses public private key pairs, so the private key is ours.

2 Likes

Why nobody is considering Silence? It’s the best opensource SMS app in F-Droid and can encrypt messages when both parties use Silence - otherwise works like plain SMS app. The only weak point are multi-recipient messages but it is rather UX quirk and easy to fix. I would never consider an app which wants to upload my phone number to the cloud as precondition for use to be privacy friendly, especially if the app is nonfree and the cloud is not operated by a nonprofit org.

3 Likes

I use Silence since two years and I’m always happy.
until now I disabled the other SMS-App in e.

There is a bug that prevent me from using QKSMS: if you receive an MMS while your mobile data is off, you won’t see it at all in QKMS until your turn on mobile data. With the plain sms app, you get an entry saying “you have an sms, click in link below to download it”. I wrote the author and pitifully it is not something he plans to fix (don’t remembre why).

Apart that, and the lack of accent support in contact searches (qksms distinguishes é from é, so Céline won’t be found if you enter Celine), QKMS is a nice app.

Actually there’s also some people who cares about privacy, but hates complicated tech-savvy stuff. They just want something out-of-box. These people usually end up using apple products since those stuff have better privacy control ( than stock android ROM), and what /e/ team need to reach these guys is to build a usable /e/asy installer and tell them: “plug in the phone and we will done it for you” :smile_cat: