Comment by kome
8 years ago
Signal Desktop is not really standalone, because you still need to pair it with your phone. And the phone should be turned on.
I am very privacy conscious, and I don't use a smartphone, at all, because it's basically a spying device in your pocket.
Why Signal is all about privacy and then it forces me to pair it with a telephone?
Telegram desktop is really standalone. They require a telephone number too (and that's very annoying), but they don't require having a smartphone or keeping your phone open. My phone number on telegram is not even my phone number anymore, and it doesn't make any difference... Privacy wise is far from being perfect, but it's already better. At least it's usable.
Signal Desktop works without having your phone turned on. It acts like a full, independent client after linking it to your smartphone app (unlike WhatsApp, which does require your phone to be turned on).
wow, sorry. my bad.
So I guess there is a way to use signal without having a phone nowadays! That's a great news!
I will try right now.
You still need a phone with a registered Signal on iOS or Android initially to activate the desktop version (sorry if that wasn't clear), but you can turn your phone off after.
Edit: It actually has the option to register without smartphone, but it's only enabled in the debug versions.
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You can get a google voice number and just activate through that. On iOS you have to type a confirmation code in manually, so there is no need for a debug version there.
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You could always use it without the phone.
> I am very privacy conscious
How did you evaluate Telegram to decide that you trust it?
I don't trust them, it's just that I can use them. The real problem is requiring a smartphone.
I don't get you. You chose a secure messaging platform that you don't trust?
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The desktop version never required a running smartphone (one might even be able to complete signup using the app in an emulator and a dumbphone or a VoIP provider to receive the SMS, not sure)
Wire seems to have better security, and it’s desktop app doesn’t require a phone number and supports multiple logins. Client and server are open source.
It’s got a pretty bad case of kitchen-sink flat ui, but is otherwise not bad.
Wire has crazy usability issues after sending a few hundred messages. Clients just freeze up and crash. Another issue is centralized metadata collection.
I know it's open source, but modifying it and recompiling all the clients I'm using would be very annoying.
How can you be very privacy conscious yet lack ownership of the phone number that your Telegram account's registered on? Whoever takes ownership of that number can easily lock you out of your account while retaining access to everything you've ever posted.
Telegram is protected by an additional password. I hope that's the case for signal or whatsapp as well.
Is Telegram as secure as Signal though?
No.
This comment is not helpful.
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Why do you trust the very large attack surface that is your personal computer less than the smaller attack surface that is your smartphone?
How do you define attack surface? I trust my personal computer more than my phone.
My personal computer runs an open source bios (coreboot) with an open source operating system (linux) and no closed source software (at least one of my PCs does). My phone on the other hand has many processors running on it (that I know about) that can interact with my device without me knowing and binary blobs (yes even with lineageos and with microg) that I can't control and many parts I can't update or update as fast/easy as my pc.
My point: for most people the attack surface of the smartphone is far larger than the attack surface of the PC
Can you expand more on your personal decision to be so privacy conscious?
No.
This is a very Ron Swanson style answer that I approve of.