heads up, I have been seeing a bunch of clickbait articles with links to a site calle occupy-democrats dot icu, but if you click on it (which I don't recommend) it's a redirect to an invitation to a whatsapp group. I'm not about to click on anything on that site, it seems super scam/malware to me
If I'm wrong and this is a legit thing, someone let me know
Hard to imagine anything on whatapp being legit… 😏
nothing owned by meta is trustworthy, not IG, WhatsApp, Facebook, Oculus, giphy, none of them. signal.org
If people don't have a phone they can use for Signal, I'd say try Session.
I will check this out, thanks
Indeed, simpleX is also a viable option, as is matrix.
I'll check these out as well
Matrix, I would find a homeserver other than matrix.org just because they have to comply with stuff, most of the rest of the network couldn’t care less about those restrictions however. session and simplex are good but there is less buffer between you and whoever you are talking to.
All of the suggestions have solid e2e crypto though which is what you really need. Whatapp is basically a telegram clone, it’s used in similar ways, and both being probably less trustworthy than sms in the clear at this point.
Ya, I haven't tried matrix yet, but been meaning to. I have used session and @veilid.com, but veilid's chat is still beta afaik. That can put some people off, but it doesn't bother me at all.
It all depends on your posture though. Security posture vs usability convenience is always a thing.
Indeed, not “personally” used any of their tech in decades now. That said I don’t trust anything that requires my actual phone number either. ;)
understandable, though they've added usernames now so only signal needs your phone number, not any of your contacts
Yeah, I use it with burners and usernames when I use it.
It's also common for a lot of click activated worms to direct to WhatsApp. There were a few of those on Xitter.