- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
I’ve been working really hard to research and rank messaging apps by their privacy. The more green boxes the better.
I plan to turn PrivacySpreadsheet.com into a place for privacy data on everything from cars to video games. It’s all open source too on GitHub.
Not trying to advertise, I just put a lot of time into researching all this, and I want to share it since I think others could benefit.
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Bro put Tinder DMs on the list. Points for being thorough I guess lol.
Jokes aside looks really useful. Good job!
And Xbox live
I forgot Grindr DMs, but you already know that ones gonna be red all the way down lmao
Pls share with friends if you find it useful, I dont accept donations or anything, and it’ll never have ads or bullshit.
I’m working on adding more services, but each one takes about 4 hours to research and review.
Google’s bound to put ads on Google sheets eventually.
Its not Google Sheets. It was initially generated with the tool because I like the formatting, but its HTML running on Cloudflare Pages. The source code is here
If you see errors or hwve suggestions, please submit an issue on GitHub, they’re easier to track than here
That hardly looks like original source code, but more like a HTML dumped from the website.
Or maybe just use used some visual editor to insert tables? I don’t believe it’s written by hand.
They said “it was initially generated with the tool [Google Sheets]”.
The issue with me is ease of use to use with other people. I’ve tried Matrix and Session with other tech minded people and it’s not nearly as seemless as Signal. I’m just waiting for an app that ticks all my boxes, really looking forward to Signal usernames though.
I made the mistake of getting my family to switch to Signal. It works great for messaging, but it has other issues—beyond the typical SIM-required complaint. I hate that you have to register with a ‘primary’ device on either iOS or Android fueling that duopoly (SoL if you are on a postmarketOS or KaiOS or Capyloon phone… or just don’t want a internet-capable phone). Notifications are sent thru Google’s FSM (news 1–2 months ago that of course Apple & Google send all the metadata to the feds) & refuse to support UnifiedPush (thank goodness the Molly fork does). They’re also not too happy to support alternative clients meaning you are stuck with the shitty, resource-sucking Electron client while not having a web client or native or TUI client. And the worst cherry on top is shipping those iOS emoji to Android & Linux …eww.
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Yeah not having it as a default SMS app sucks. Can’t really argue with you there. Perhaps, one could make a fork with it?? Just thought of that now.
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I seriously doubt any encrypted messenger is going to support OS like KaiOS or non internet capable devices.
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For unified push, just use molly.
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iOS emojis…I really don’t care, Signal devs have other things to worry about.
With an FPGA or special CPU instruction set, the encryption algorithms could run on a toaster—which would give access to whatever low-spec handheld you wanted without making it chug to have strong encryption. That also still isn’t covering the future hope of a Linux phone, or someone that just wants to register an account on their laptop.
Using forks puts stress on other teams to keep up with breaking changes, & 90%+ of folks won’t be looking for forks or be willing to trust their unofficial status. I saw the code for UnifiedPush as a Mattermost plugin & it was like 50 lines or something small which is much less than the rest while allowing users to keep control of their metadata which is a big deal if you care about privacy. A fork for SMS support would encounter similar issues, & now you either need to compete with Molly or copy its featureset otherwise users have to choose, SMS or UnifiedPush. That said, I agree with the SMS situation since it was easy to convince relatives to use this new “text app” where encryption magically came to a chunk of their contact list.
Saying emoji was the most important was tongue-in-cheek, but it makes the application feel non-native (& I like Apple’s emoji are particularly ugly). You would think at least the Google set was shipped to Android, or—now hear me out—not ship emoji, don’t override the user experience, let the user’s fontconfig display the one they set. Shipping a whole font (or images) for emoji is why the application size is so bloated for a chat app.
The first two arguments I get. But the emoji argument about not shipping them at all? Yeah if this is going to be a mainstream and easy to use app then that won’t fly. My friends, family, and I all use emojis, gifs, and stickers. I’m sure many people enjoy these things as well. All that bloat.
Are you using a device without an emoji font installed on the system at all? The web works just fine without browsers shipping an emoji font.
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Signal really is that better replacement for WhatsApp since the functionality is identical, others would have to force people to get used to the different ui and the options.
Except Signal UI is… Not good. It feels like using a texting app.
Between the UI and dropping SMS support, I can’t get anyone to use it anymore, and people I had using it have moved on.
Dropping SMS is really frustrating - it was the big selling point I had.
but it is a texting app…
I’m one of those people who thinks SMS has no place in a private messaging app. Signal is the gold standard, and enabling sms merely legitimised this incredibly non private and antiquated messaging protocol.
And gave a constant reminder to people that something better was right there.
And put things in one place.
You’re letting perfect be the enemy of good. At least with SMS support I could get people to switch to “this new texting app”, and we’d then have a proper Signal encrypted chat. And when they texted someone else, Signal would append the “you could have encryption too” signature, generating a conversation about it.
The people who moved off of Signal went back to SMS entirely. How is that better?
Huge bummer. Kind of understood why they did it but they lost a lot of people because of this.
Everyone. Everyone. I mean everyone here misses the biggest plus for WhatsApp compared to pretty much every other messenger. Signal is pretty much the only one as “simple” as it.
We are all too big of privacy geeks to realize what non-tech-savvy people go through with these.
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Sign up process is dead simple from your phone. It is literally as simple as putting in your phone and PIN. Once you hit the “choosing server” on people using matrix for the first time, you have already lost them. Completely. The exact same thing happened with mastodon and lemmy. People who had no idea about how federation and decentralization were instantly lost
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Backups: backing up is a process that the users have to do on a lot of matrix clients, or not available. People want to be able to simply move to a new phone by installing the new app, logging in, and being right back with all of your old messages. Even on signal you still have to restore the automatic backup. If you don’t have that file, you are screwed. I can’t remember if Element will sync your messages automatically to a new device.
Those 2 things and population are literally the only thing that the average person actually cares about outside of other people being available on the platform.
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I’ve been using Matrix for years, but now only as a replacement for IRC. The encryption key handling has always been cumbersome and flakey, and too easily broken by users. Not compromised “broken”, but locked out “broken.” It’s been like this for years, and while the UI has improved, it’s still too hard for casual users to confidently use; I’ve given up hope that it’ll ever get to a point where I can recommend it to friends who don’t give a fuck how it works, and who aren’t interested in spending a half hour figuring out how to set things up - they just want it to work. So many encrypted messaging systems have done this correctly, I dispair that Matrix can’t (it’s a common issue with all clients, so I blame the design of the protocol).
Edit oh, I also wanted to say I’d also been disillusioned with Matrix when I realized I couldn’t run my own server. That is, I technically could; I just couldn’t afford to. Synapse is a hot mess of a server, but it also just pounds on the CPU and requires massive amounts of disk space (over time). Matrix is designed such that all content for channels joined by any user is replicated to the user’s home server. It’s a questionable design decison, at best, but a consequence is that regardless of the server software, the storage requirements make running a home server cost prohibative. Compared to, say, running an xmpp server, which could be done effectively on a Pi.
Replicating all chat history + attachments provides a lot of resilience to the network from a node going down, but at the cost preventing to the home lab user from practically hosting a server which just means everything centralizes around Matrix.org, & when anyone on Matrix.org chats with you or your group, that metadata gets synced back to the central hub server once outwardly funded by Israeli intelligence.
Love your commitment but I already knew SimpleX is the best. 🙃
Would absolutely add Session, I think it’s basically a requirement for this comparison. Great work otherwise
Yes, please add Session. Wire is missing, too.
A version of this with usability features would be nice. Some of these I gave earnest tries, with multiple friends who were willing to indulge my interest, and the tools failed for various reasons: too cumbersome, too confusing, too unreliable, too basic. It’s a subjective metric, but these are social tools, and to be useful, they have to be usable – and many simply aren’t.
I don’t know if it’s humorous, but one unexpected thing I discovered was that Wire’s and Session’s embedded animated GIF finder+inserter is so hugely desireable with my friends, it became an almost minimum requirement. Funny GIFs are immensely popular.
Session, Wire, and Element are done and will be added later today
I just saw Session - thanks!
But now I’m confused. Maybe you could add notes about what some of the rows mean. For example:
- Upon what is based the “recommended for private comnunication?” Recommended by whom? Under what criteria?
- Why is Session’s voice/video “n/a” when it supports encrypted voice and video calls?
- Why is running a private server, rated as higher security than distributed, tor-like onion networks? (can self host), and why is Session listed as “no” when anyone can self host routing nodes in the network? This preference for centralized servers over distributed onion networks is particularly baffling for a privacy-focused table.
This is a huge labor. Thanks again for attempting it.
why not put this on Wikipedia? Theres already a great article there that would benefit from this additional data
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_cross-platform_instant_messaging_clients
We could just cite the website the guy made as one of the sources?
What are you using to create this read-only spreadsheet?
I don’t see Wire listed. Do you plan to add it?
Yes
I don’t think wire is the best privacy wise
Very few dont require a phone numbers, so Wire is def in the top 10
I think most don’t require phone numbers
Oh boy you’re in for a surprise
Signal is the only one I know that requires a phone number
WhatsApp, Telegram too.
Oh, and Discord and a bunch of others dont tell you they require phones. Until their ML system false-positives and locks you out of your account until you auth with a phone number.
Didn’t even include the default messages app that most Android phones ship with 🤦
Please submit a GitHub issue so I can track the suggestions and problems, thanks
Done
I’ve updated the spreadsheet to include Google Messages, should be live on the site now :)
I don’t think Google Messages is the default one tho? It’s just called “Messages” on my Oneplus
it would be more usable if the left column were locked so you don’t lose it when scrolling horizontally. Same for the top row.
“Email / Phone required for signup” ← these are on two very different levels of intrusiveness… really needs to split into two rows. And from there, it’s interesting to know whether a phone must be a mobile phone or not. With email, it’s interesting to know if disposable addresses are blocked or not.
Also, for “decentralized network” for #Signal, you simply have “no”. I would change that to “No (Amazon)” to inform people they are feeding Amazon by using Signal.
In fact I suggest also adding a row: “feeds a tech giant” because privacy from tech giants is not the only factor – some of us trying to live ethically do not want to even feed privacy offending tech giants, such as:
- Amazon
- Microsoft
- Cloudflare
- Apple
And as someone else pointed out, Delta Chat is missing.
I’ll ask here since it’s such a good thread: best FLOSS privacy respecting replacement for discord?
Adding to sibling… Discord is used in a couple of different ways at present for communities. If you mean voice coms for gaming or otherwise, Mumble should be in your repository. If it’s more of a of a Slack-like business chat, self-hosted Mattermost is actually pretty nice. If it’s just text chat, IRCv3 & XMPP have that covered & scale massively even on a home PC. If it’s voice calls, Jitsi or Jami can work. If you are posting updates or things that should be forum topics, you shouldn’t be using chat anyways where Mastodon, Misskey, Lemmy, & other Fediverse options or even Atom feeds can suffice. If you want integrated chat, community updates/posts, voice/video calls (unsure if conference calls are support) Movim is a good option–and if you don’t mind the rough UI edges, Libervia can do similar but also integrates a calendar for events. Bear in mind as well that a lot of these technologies can be bridged between one another to avoid some of the lock-in, but I would hesitate to force everyone’s chat to be piped & logged thru Discord’s servers. It’s also not bad to say “we use these 2 services” rather than requiring a kitchen sink communications application.
Very thorough response thanks. This shows me about how many things discord covers, which is a good and bad thing, makes migrating away much more difficult.
So contributions require folks create accounts with Microsoft for GitHub? That’s a bit contradictory, but here you are telling folks to raise “Issues” exposing themselves to Microsoft’s ToS & data collection machine.
You’re not required to contribute. I went with GH because it doesn’t require creating a new account on an obscure Git provider, which would kill the chwnces of anyone contributing.
Git provides itself, so forges aren’t even required (the d is distributed version control). Issue trackers don’t need to be attached to the code forge. Ewen if you like someone else hosting it & an sidecar of integrated bug tracking, it should not require an account with Microsoft if privacy is the end goal—and there’s a host (pun not intend) of other options.
PRISM Break, Calyx live on GitLab (not obscure, supports SSO). Many free software projects like Freedesktop, GNOME, KDE, DivestOS, Briar, Jami self-host the community edition of GitLab. Privacy Tools & Awesome Privacy mirror to Codeberg, presumably to espcape the megacorporate bubble. LibreWolf is exclusively Codeberg. Cwtch self-hosts Gitea. Prosody self-hosts its Mercurial server. Choosing not Microsoft GitHub puts you in good company.
If a mailing lists alternative isn’t your thing, Forgefed, federation protocol for software forges, would apply for anyone with a Fediverse account (so Lemmy) could submit issues with Forgejo build it in along with others soon (GitLab expressed interest).
Choosing proprietary tools and services for your free software project ultimately sends a message to downstream developers and users of your project that freedom of all users—developers included—is not a priority.
—Matt Lee, https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/opinion-github-vs-gitlab
Mailing lists are for old fat unix guys. Who uses email anymore? I can’t even remember the last time I opened my inbox, maybe a month ago for a 2FA code?
I’ll stick with GitHub because its what I know. If you don’t want to use GitHub, then you can still view the spreadsheet, just dont click the GitHub or Datasets links in the fop left.
You’re in a privacy-related space that values keeping data away from the corporations—that’s why your response has a worse ratio. If you don’t want your messaging data with data with Meta or Google, why would you be okay with Microsoft for your code? I like that instead of acknowledging the multitude of options you would have that puts your project in better position for contributor privacy, you chose to attack the one you disliked the most, mailing lists, & dismissed everything else. It’s really not any more difficult to pick up something like Codeberg & the UI loads faster too.
If someone said “WhatsApp is what I know, why should I care about your $MESSAGING_APP?” would you not, like, send them the output of your project to explain how their digital privacy is at risk? Consider building another list comparing code forges & see that you get little extra from MS GitHub being closed, proprietary, centralized, for-profit/publicly-traded, requires accepting Microsoft ToS to create an account, search locked behind auth, slow to load, slow to fix bugs, has outages constantly, locks out all users from Yemen et al. due to US sanctions, plays ball with capitalists (such as following record label demands to take down
youtube-dl), pushes ‘social’ features (massive can of worms), tries to monopolize the developer space on the network effect, etc.
Thanks for this, I like the idea.
Nice work so far! It’s a big task, really.
Smart idea hosting on git. Gives it a chance to be maintained and have a history.
Any way to download as a csv/excel file? (I can just copy/paste from the web, but that’s imperfect)
I’m working on it, and an Excel file will be available later today under the “datasets” directory in GitHub
Not sure, but I couldn’t find Tox (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_(protocol)) anywhere?
