I use an iPhone and my fiancé uses Android. He is not very tech savvy. He does not like to text for privacy reasons. I was going to recommend we get Signal but see others in Lemmy talking about Matrix. Is that better? If so, what app is best that works on both our phones? Thanks Lemmy friends!
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Signal is great for one on one conversations or small groups. Matrix is better served for communities as federation offers censorship resitance, but they collect some metadata that Signal doesn’t. They do have encrypted DMs, but it’s less user friendly than Signal and if your partner is not tech savvy, I would go with Signal.
Signal has 2 points of concern:
- Phone number requirement
- Centralized server (one point of failure)
I use both for different groups of people. E.g. My Matrix account is publically listed on my Lemmy account, but my Signal one is only given to people I trust to some level.
Phone number requirement is disappearing, username accounts are coming soon
I don’t think their are removing phone requirement, they will just add username support on top of it, so you can invite people using username, but still need phone to register an account.
Go with signal, it’s the right tool for your job. Matrix has its merits, but is less intuitive, less streamlined, and less polished then signal. For many use case these wouldn’t matter, but for you they do.
Signal is so easy, my grandparents are on it. They can’t attach a file on an email, but they can use signal.
+1 to this, signal for the normal people in your life, matrix for the techies.
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I use Matrix (Element client on iOS) with the extended family and it works well. Most of them are not tech-savvy. I self-host my own Matrix instance because I wanted to have control on where personal pictures were hosted.
And naturally, matrix is federated so you can join rooms of any other instance.
And if you don’t like the app you’re using, you can easily switch it without losing your data or making everyone else have to switch to the new app.
I’ve never bothered to try alternatives to Element. Are they worth trying ?
I would say they are absolutely worth trying. I’ve personally been alright with the look and feel of Element but there may be something in the other matrix apps that you enjoy more. FluffyChat is another popular one that I see mentioned a lot.
There is basically no issue with having multiple apps installed and signed in, the biggest hurdle is just signing into the app and then verifying it. Beyond that, it’s just customizing and feeling it out.
It’s actually better, rooms are decentralized. This means that even if the original server that made the room is offline or gone forever the room can continue. IIUC this is unlike Lemmy where if the instance that hosts a community goes offline that community is dead.
Some things like users are only federated, but hopefully that changes at some point.
It is worth noting that if your rooms are using e2e encryption than the photos should also be encrypted. So it shouldn’t be a major concern where the photos are hosted.
But it can still be nice to have full control over you chat.
The not so tech savvy family members have trouble with e2e though. They always have problems with device somehow not properly authorized, and some encrypted rooms accessible from the computer but not from the phone. I usually solve it for them regularly, but they still can’t do it by themselves. So I prefer to keep the rooms unencrypted (we are not sharing state secrets anyway), but self-hosted (I don’t want to give away family pictures to big tech companies).
We should all be using Signal, all of the time. It’s accessible to those not technically inclined, and I feel like that’s a requirement now if a personal-use technology wants to get off the ground.
Edit: this is not to detract from matrix, which seems like a great technology for privacy
One advantage of Matrix/Element over Signal is that it isn’t linked to your phone number… Much easier to use across platforms and when you change phones.
This is certainly a “pro.” However, I’ve never had an issue swapping phones with Signal. (I do lose my chat history, but I can’t remember if that’s my doing or if signal just can’t port history to a new device.)
I’m going to have to give Matrix a try. I’ve been seeing it mentioned a lot over the past week.
If you want to keep your history in Signal, you’ll need to backup your messages in a file, and restore your history on the new phone with the file (at least, it’s the easiest way I could find).
I prefer the account-based philosophy of Matrix over the phone-number one of Signal, but you mileage may vary.
Matrix (and Element, its mainly used client) is not without flaw of course, notably voice/video call works somewhat better in Signal in my experience.
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Get Signal.
I have both and the synchronising of matrix keeps ages.
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You don’t need same app on both for phone to use matrix, there are multiple apps that can communicate over matrix, some may not be available on both iOS and Android.
But if you were to use matrix, I’d recommend using Element which just happens to be available on iOS and Android.
Matrix IMO is more like a discord alternative. For private messaged I would use (and I do use) Signal. Its very easy to setup too and seems like the most reliable instant messenger.
I use Matrix with friends and family, we all moved from signal.
I made accounts for my family members on my homeserver and told them to sign in, so they didn’t have to register (slightly easier on boarding). They all figured it out with minimal hand-holding.
For my friends and coworkers, I just tell them “make an account on X instance, its a good one”, and they all figured it out.
If you want to turn a normie off secure messaging for life, give him matrix. The UX is completely horrid.
I think element is pretty easy to use honestly.
Sorry to disagree, but I’ve been moving chunks of people to my matrix/element instance with great success. What have you experienced that is
horridfrom the UX perspective?The keying is not very transparent and it’s really easy to lock yourself out of your own older messages.
Interesting… I guess I see what you mean. Using public instances that are ‘centralized’ does reduce this kind of issues, even though they’re not perfect.
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If they’re not that tech savvy, though, you might also be expecting a lot if you want them to distinguish between client and server/service.
For the most part, they’re probably expecting the service to be the same app. Facebook is the Facebook app, Instagram is the Instagram app, so on.
Having multiple clients for the same thing might be a stretch, let alone having to find one that works and isn’t missing features and things.
Just stick to signal, matrix can be used the same way but it’s a lot more complicated and requires involvement in keeping your backup key safe, otherwise you’ll lose every encrypted message! Signal is similar to whatsapp. (which is obviously…a popular app…which should already explain the simplicity of setting it up.)
anything that gives you E2EE with keys/certs you control.
You would need to host your own or join a matrix server. The benefit of Matrix is you can tie in puppets to things like iMessage, Discord, FB Messenger if you host it yourself. Another option is Beeper (Matrix + all the puppets for other messaging apps) but you still have to sign up and get an invite from them to join for now.
If privacy is the ultimate goal, I think Signal is a bit better.
That said, Signal is doing a bunch of user-unfriendly stuff that turns me off a bit. For example, they had a great SMS integration on Android that they’re now killing for no obvious reason. And more problematic- on iOS there is NO backup/restore functionality. None. So if you lose your phone, all your chat history is gone. It doesn’t backup to iCloud or anywhere else. The ONLY backup or transfer option is if you get a new phone you can transfer data from old to new.
Android has a full backup/restore function that backs everything up to an encrypted file. No idea why they don’t do the same on iOS.Matrix is also better for multiple device access. On Signal, you can connect additional devices (laptop etc) but they are always subservient to the main device. Conversation history doesn’t transfer from the main device to addon devices, although conversations stay in sync on both devices from the point you add the device forward. But if you get a new phone for example, that’s a new parent device, so your desktop convo history gets wiped.
Matrix on the other hand, no device is primary and conversation history is stored (encrypted) on the server. So backup your crypto key and you can access everything from any device (including a web browser).For Matrix- Element is the one to use most of the time…
I would think its NOT good privacy to backup it to icloud. As ANY backup. They probably do no backups, because it is unsafe to do so.
Properly encrypted backups should be fine. You should be able to put a backup with a sufficiently secure password anywhere or the encryption is broken, and I don’t think Signal’s is.
You would need a very good password, of course. I use a 64 or 128 character random string from my password manager for these types of backups and I’m confident posting the files in just about any cloud storage location.
If the backup isn’t encrypted, or you can’t pick your own key, the situation changes drastically, of course.
Yeah, but the best encryption is… not to give the data to unwanted third parties. As then they have time of their lives to encrypt that ( if they want ).
In information technologies there are three main security goals: Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability. And while Signal is really good with the first two it utterly fails with the last one (at least on iOS).
Still I use Signal every day and would also recommend it to everybody who just wants a good private instant messaging client. While I also like and use Matrix (and see a bright future for the protocoll) there are still far too many problems to use it stress-free and smothly in everyday life.
Then why on Android do they do a full database backup encrypted by a simple PIN code?
It could be something legal with apple too. But it was just a guess!!!
Or, maybe they just don’t consider at an important enough problem to get fixed. A big part of my point is that if there was a specific reason why they chose not to do it, that reason would be communicated to the users. As far as I am aware, no such reason has been communicated. Don’t get me wrong, I like signal a lot. I’m a little bit critical sometimes because I feel that there are important features like this, which have a serious effect on usability, that are not getting the priority they need.
I ditched signal after they reversed course and dropped support for SMS in the app for bullshit reasons. Who knows what other brain dead move they will try to pull next?
Why would you want SMS? It’s unencrypted and goes against the whole point of signal. I use QKSMS for SMS and it’s great at SMS.
Likely for the sake of only needing a single app. Both SMS and Signal messages (as well as similar apps) all use your phone number for receiving messages so why not view all of them in a single app? SMS apps are nearly always lightweight so storage isn’t really an issue but for some, having one less icon on the app drawer is a plus.
