Stop using SMS?
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2022
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Privacy
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SMS works where internet does not.
There are many places where the data connection is either not available, or hideouly unreliable. In many rural areas, especially in poorer countries but also in wealthy ones, you can still have cell signal but no data, and SMS still works without data.
Let them eat cake.
Very real. I work in remote places where I have to find high ground, stand on my truck, and hold my phone as high as possible just to get SMS in/out. There is no reason to expect there will ever be anymore towers up there, so data or even calls are a no go.
Not at all my experience, the miniscule amount of data needed for a text message goes over the shittiest of internet lines. Yes, SMS sometimes goes over a highly saturated network where data doesn't because sms just yeets your data instead of establishing a proper connection with a handshake. Though that's usually very unreliable as well. SMS is also terrible from a privacy perspective, as it is unencrypted and can be spoofed and read by anyone in between, and even read by third parties who just listen in on the wireless transmission. Look where you're posting. "Cake" pfft
Matrix / element or XMPP. I've been using it for years now both for friends / fam, and for group chats.
I think OP is not looking for an encrypted chat but rather looking for a replacement app to send unencrypted SMS messages (and store them encrypted on the device) like Signal has done since it was called TextSecure and is finally going to stop doing now.
ohhh gotcha my bad.
Well what I liked about signal was the locked access and encrypted database to protect any on-device SMS messages from snooping if I lost my phone or having an interaction with the authorities as you can't be forced to give up a password (as opposed to finger print).
So I looked for a fork of signal and found ***Silence on F-Droid. ** *
It has both those features. Again, I'm not using it to encrypt messages E2E... I'm looking at on device security
Yes! Silence! This is what Signal was before all the googleization, works like a charm. The most significant problem is: Where do you find people to change encrypted SM using Silence? I have just ONE fried who is using silence.
Signal is moving away from the SMS protocol, AFAIK. Is this right?
Signal wasn't using the SMS protocol. They were using the Signal protocol. They're droping support for using the app as an SMS client. I think than nobody should be using SMSs nowdays so that's good.
No one should, but sooooo many Americans are. I don't have a single person using Silence for E2E messages. Nor did I really have any friends using signal, either. But for myself I was looking for on device encryption and password protected app usage. I wish I had friends using either... But they all have iPhones and use iMessage.
Oof. That sucks. :(
I remember silence. It was good, but havent gotten any updates in like 2 years.
I just installed it. Looks great 👍
I've replaced Signal with SimpleX, and for SMS I use Simple SMS Messenger.
I just tried SimpleX, seems a very nice tool! I even got it to install onto my Linux PC, easy, like stealing a baby it's porridge! Thanks for the advice.
Still have to find a person to use it with. And to research how the telephony is working with the CLI App.
@epso A good alternative I recommend would be Simple SMS Messenger. They don't have internet access but also heed that SMS itself is still insecure but limiting as much data being acquired helps in the long run.
Use Silence. It's been working for me all these years and still does. https://silence.im/
Interestingly enough, it's at least as private as Signal. Actually, probably more so because not all messages go through a single central provider based in the Heart of the Empire.
Fdroid link: https://f-droid.org/packages/org.smssecure.smssecure/
To all the people here screaming about SMS bad! I feel like for me signal was like an iMessage for android, like one could get their family to use it by just replacing their SMS app with it. It just worked. With a seperate app its like useless cause most people dont seem to care about end to end encryption and just want to use 1, maybe 2 apps. Yes SMS is horrible but it helped with adoption cause it was the app you could just get your same text messages in but if the other person had signal you had more features. Similar to how iMessage works
Old signal client:)
This will eventually stop working, so isn't a long-term solution, sadly.