The Signal messaging progam is now the favored messaging program for the European Commission instead of proprietary messaging programs. The decision was made last month, in February, to prefer it for both internal and external communication.
The Signal open source software is written in JavaScript, TypeScript and CSS and published on GitHub under a General Public Licence v3.0[*] (GPLv3). In particular, the clients are published under the GPLv3 license, while the server code is published under the GNU Affero General Public License v3. The software contains the following features:
- Voice and video calls to other Signal users;
- Text messages, files, voice notes, pictures, GIFs, and video messages to other Signal users;
- Group messaging;
- Set deletion timers for messages on both the sender and the received devices.
All communications to other Signal users are free of charge and automatically end-to-end encrypted.
[*] Link in source was malformed (lacked URL). Updated to point to official GNU document. --martyb
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jelizondo on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:57PM (7 children)
Great to hear Signal is being used.
I conviced a couple of friends to try it, but we ended surrendering to WhatsApp. Not my choice, simply everyone is using it and the social pressure is way to high.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:19PM (2 children)
Same here.
I have a dozen people on my Signal contact list, but I actually talk to just two of them over Signal (my wife, and a nerdy friend that moved to Seattle).
It's very difficult to get rid of Watsapp, as there are not only lots of friends, but even numerous services that use it. For instance, I book appointments with my dentist via Whatsapp.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @09:25PM
I have started using two phones (actually, I already had two phones, but the second one is for app deployments testing only. I just added a prepaird SIM card to that one, to get a phone number).
I've now "caved" and installed WhatsApp on my secondary phone. If my friends want a direct response, they know to use signal or SMS. When they message me on WhatsApp, they know I won't read it quickly. They seem to accept it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday March 19 2020, @09:25AM
Don't they have a phone or web site as an alternative? I've never seen a business where WhatsApp was the only contact mechanism, just the most convenient one (and I'm happy to put up with a small inconvenience to avoid Facebook products). If you are in the EU or California, then you can ask to see a copy of their compliance document indicating why data sharing with Facebook is required to offer the service, that they are informing their customers that they share data with Facebook. For extra fun, ask them how much they are willing to indemnify customers for, in monetary terms, for data sharing with Facebook.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday March 18 2020, @11:07PM (3 children)
It is good, but not perfect. There was attempts to federate the system, but this was quashed by the developer. I discovered this a few weeks ago when my friend told me to get Signal, the open source encrypted messenger, but I couldn't find it in F-Droid!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Federation [wikipedia.org]
While I complain, I don't have a good alternative in mind.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @01:56AM (1 child)
Matrix is open source, federated, and also has E2E encryption (also OTR-based like Signal). I set it up recently and it's definitely in need of some polish, but it works.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:38AM
The initial bootstrap for Tox is NOT decentralized, since you have to get the initial DHT from somewhere, but after that it goes user to user or user relay user with only key, endpoint and packet data visible to the relays if you are not operating peer to peer over clearnet. Given the dangers of servers shutting down in the federation sense, I think Tox's system adds more portability if more people were to run their own relays, and more apps had a slot in them for adding priority relays (currently you have to add them in the tox.ini file manually which is obviously beyond most modern day users, leaving metadata connecting user accounts available.)
(Score: 5, Informative) by TheRaven on Thursday March 19 2020, @09:55AM
sudo mod me up