Session is an Australian conpany afaik. The entire app reeks of entrapment. Australian laws are all about no privacy for you.
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
17 points (61.6% liked)
Privacy
34425 readers
1281 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
They recently relocated to Switzerland, after the AFP visited an employee, unannounced, at their home.
what in the fucking dystopia are they doing.
Don't use Session! It's not secure with the recent changes!
Not sure, I've never used session but I think less tech savvy people would want to use signal because it is similar to Whatsapp, which they are used to.
I used to think session is a way to go, but now..well simplex is literally all you need for communication with anyone
You can easily re-roll usernames in Signal, and profiles in SimpleX. I couldn’t find an equivalent feature in Session.
First impression: why another messaging system?
It may be fine, but what does it bring that Signal/Briar/Matrix/XMPP+Omemo doesn't have? Does it use existing standard protocol or encryption that's compatible with other messengers, to avoid fragmentation?
I think it has tor routing by default, so different in that way?
Briar use Tor by default as well for Internet connections, so I don't think Session is unique in that way. And both appear decentralized.
A difference is that Briar is Android-only, whereas session is available on more platforms https://sourceforge.net/software/compare/Briar-vs-Session-vs-Signal/
It's good that people are working on privacy-preserving tools. But I wish they'd coordinate to avoid fragmentation. Work on common/standard messenging protocols, so that people can talk to each other even using different software.
Currently it feels like going back to the 1990s-2000s, with ICQ/AIM/MSNM being all incompatible, and every single one being unable to communicate with a large fraction of your contacts.
Fair, I've never used Briar, so I was mostly responding to the others. I complete agree though, the fact that there are so many is super frustrating.
What do you think about OLVID?
Dear god, just don't.
https://soatok.blog/2025/01/14/dont-use-session-signal-fork/
As soon as I saw the furry reaction images, I knew this was going to be a detailed and informative blog post.
Wasn’t this the blog who also got a response from session asking for a PoC and then they replied with (paraphrasing) “well it’s not my job to provide one”?
So everything in that blog post is theoretical at best?
Really bad idea, session copied signal, stripped out forward secrecy, and uses centralized file transfer servers.
This link has a helpful graphic, thank you! 🙂👍
The real alternative to Signal for myself is SimpleX. The project is still in his beginning but it's the best instant messaging we could have once polished finished
firstly , why do you want to replace Signal?
Because his grandma can't type a password 30 characters long just to restore her messages.
They are so smart and still make some choices that are so, so, *so dumb*. 'No history on a new PC for you, it's a ״feature״'. Seriously? c'mon.
History isn't stored on the server so it can't be automatically populated on a new device. That is a feature. The alternative, storing the messages on the server or having the means for one device to clone all of its messages to another device, would be insecure.
A 30 character long password is required in order to have enough bits of entropy so that the backed up messages are actually secure.
Grandma isn't moving her data to a new PC without assistance, the person that is assisting her should be competent enough to operate Signal.
Sure, so let me export my data from another PC or phone. If they wanted you to have message history, they would. So I'll respectfully disagree.
Why can she do WhatsApp but no Signal?
It's already needing to convince people to use Signal, why also making it hard for, let's say, your grandma.
Sure, so let me export my data from another PC or phone. If they wanted you to have message history, they would. So I’ll respectfully disagree.
I use Matrix and this is possible via several encryption keys. They just probably cba. How Matrix E2EE works
load more comments
(7 replies)
As a centralized system, nothing has been shown to improve on Signal yet. For decentralized systems, I haven’t seen anything better than Matrix yet? SimpleX is slightly more secure, but harder to spin up and easier to break.
Session… there have been multiple articles written on how it is flawed and untrustworthy.
load more comments
(4 replies)
view more: next ›