I work in security. People from my past have occasionally popped up as new signal users, I imagine they care about operational security for other reasons than what I do
Kind of infuriating that the blog post doesn't mention what "Wickr Me" is. The link in the page footer to "Wickr Me" only goes back to the same blog post.
Wickr is/was one(or the only) privacy oriented chat app that didn't require your phone number or your phone book. For some reasons there is no replacement. All the "privacy" messaging apps want your phone number and phone book.
Briar is another anonymous, fully decentralized chat app. It rides atop Tor rather than reimplementing an anonymous network protocol like Session does.
Signal isn't dropping SMS by choice, but because the APIs aren't being exposed on Android going forward. You won't find a replacement until that changes.
SESSION, the chat program that runs over the Oxen network (a Tor alternative) is much better to my mind. Voice, text, chat, all e2e encrypted and not requiring a phone number like Signal.
Used it for a few weeks, absolute trash. There is a lot that is noticeably missing if you've ever used Slack. Org ended up on Mattermost, it has its quirks (like delayed notifications) but we're very happy.
Can you please not post shallow dismissals, or comments in the flamewar style generally, to HN? You've unfortunately been doing that quite a bit, and we're trying for something else here.
> the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had invested $1.6 million into Wickr via the CIA's shell company In-Q-Tel (…) Wickr markets itself to government agencies (…) On June 25, 2021, Wickr was acquired by Amazon (…) the founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater, is one of the principal investors.
HUMINT types around the world rely on very pedestrian means to communicate with their assets, so one might imagine it's a not-quite-banal but legitimate(?) use rather than straight-up infiltration.
Haven't heard about that but I know people use it to buy drugs quite often, as in the dealer will message you through Wickr, then you transfer crypto payments and they either mail it or drop it off. A breeding ground for scams related to this as well.
Similar things have been said for people who pay with cash.
Used by "people with something to hide", and by people with dignity - people who deem it inappropriate to allow being tracked: "people with everything to hide".
Wickr is hardly the only platform with end-to-end encryption not requiring phone numbers. The same applies to Matrix, for example. That's not a valid rationale or explanation for shutting down a platform.
Telegram needs to store your messages in an unencrypted manner on their own servers but hey, at least no one "else" can see any of your message over the network due to their awesome E2E support.
When you enter "junkie" into Google it gives you accurate definition "a drug addict", because that's what it is, just more pejorative synonym for "drug addict", since I hardly have any respect for junkies I don't feel like using diplomatic terms regarding them.
Same as "family" gives you (for now) also very clear definiton "a group of one or more parents and their children living together as a unit" which is quite shocking to see at woke Google, I am surprised they didn't update this horrible discriminatory definiton I just yesterday evening discussed with friends who called me names for following exact Google definition of family and not calling childless couple a family.
This is going to be a huge loss (or gain if you're in law enforcement, I guess).
[1] https://genius.com/17161424