Hi everyone, I am looking for an encrypted messaging service to start using and recommending to my friends and family, I really want to get this right the first time. At the moment I’m looking at using matrix I really like it’s bridges and federated nature, Although I’m not 100% sure about it’s ux.
What I want to ask is what messaging service do you use and do you have any regrets with it? What encrypted messaging service would you recommended?
Edit: I just had another question are any of the bridges in matrix end to end encrypted? If person A used matrix and person B used signal could person A use a bridge to talk to person B securely?
Edit 2: thanks for all the responses guys it looks like signal seams like the best option since it has really good security like many other messaging apps but it’s also easy to use.
To answer your edit: No. They use different encryption algorithms.
I’ve used Signal since it first came out as TextSecure like 10+ years ago.
It doesnt have fancy bells or whistles, but its work well for me and good enough that ive gotten elderly family members to use it too
Signal. It’s changed a lot. For the better.
Contains proprietary code. I recommend Molly-FOSS instead.
Signal for security standard and ease of use, which is essential, if You want to use it with non techy people.
Simplex for anonymity, You can download it, share chat and start talking without registration.
Simplex for anonymity, You can download it, share chat and start talking without registration.
It ate my battery when I installed it. Do you use it on a daily basis? What’s your experience with its battery consumption?
I’m in one room with 1,500 people and it uses about 7% of my battery. Mind you, that is a lot for a messenger. But I can deal with that.
Sadly, I have no one to use with it, so I don’t know about battery usage. I just like, that it doesn’t require any external identifiers, unlike Signal.
Personally I’d go with Signal. Matrix has a certain jank level IME, for example rooms can get desynced between homeservers and the only way to fix is to create a new room and abandon the old one. Not sure how often that happens for small scale use though, I’ve only seen it in large rooms.
I will second the others that only suggest Signal or a variant of Signal like Langis or Molly. Everybody has each other’s phone numbers, go with Signal so people don’t need any other contact information.
i use simplex with people i used sms with before, and matrix for everything else
No bridges are not end 2 end encrypted. The best you can do is host the server and bridge in your own home and thus have the bridge “end” in a secure location.
If your friends and family are not very technical, then Matrix is probably a bad idea as it tends to be quite in your face about all sorts of technical issues especially with the encryption keys and so on. It works ok usually once everything is set up though.
XMPP is IMHO the better option as the mobile apps are easier to understand and the e2ee usually works out of the box and stays out of the way unless you specifically want to mess around with it. For a friends & family server I recommend setting up https://snikket.org/ or rent a server from them cheaply.
There are also good bridges for XMPP, but setting them up requires more understanding of self-hosting.
I second xmpp + omemo, and would caution that as far as I can remember matrix leaks significant metadata when syncing between instances/services.
As a personal decision I got away from signal (molly in fact) more than a year ago.
I’m also keep jami working with my family, particularly for things not requiring immediate response. It’s a different beast, since it’s p2p, but there’s no server associated to it, no matter if decentralized or not. It’s easy as well, just not as responsive, in particular if looking for immediate responses… I like and keep both, hoping jami improves.
I got my family onto signal. The app is basic, but that is kinda a benefit when getting half-blind 90yo’s onto it.
I switched from hangouts when they killed group calls by trying to be zoom.
No regrets, but group calls sometimes dont ring, which is annoying. Mostly good though.
I just moved to Signal and have convinced most of my family and many friends to join. It is very secure, non-profit and doesn’t share much personal data (the least of the main messaging services) and most of my luddite family has been able to figure it out.
Signal is the easiest with true end to end encryption with keys stored on the endpoints only.
Recommending to friends and family means Signal. With a phone number they can start using the gold standard for encryption from the get go.
I’d consider Signal to be the gold standard of secure communications.
You can describe it to them like WhatsApp, except it’s private, secure, not Facebook-owned, nonprofit so it can’t be bought or sold, etc.
Here’s the blog post that I share with my friends comparing Signal to iMessage and WhatsApp when they ask me about it.
It usually answers most of their questions.
I don’t use messengers with vendor lock-in. Therefore Matrix and XMPP see: https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html
Both self hosted on a Raspberry #freedombox https://freedombox.org/
Matrix has all the features like Slack and WhatsApp and XMPP Conversations: the very last word in instant messaging.
If you’re going to bring your friends and family, then you need to make it easy for the lowest common denominator.
I’d recommend using Signal in that case.
