Tag: Signal

I love Wikipedia – Great Article on Messengers with lots of details

While I am writing on an article on COI (Chat over Imap), OpenXchange’s latest hot new stuff, I found a wonderful Wikipedia page: (German) Wikipedia has a great article about messenger services like Whatsapp, Threema, Signal and such. Although the article called “list of mobile instant messenger services” seems to be available only in German, its content is great. Here’s the huge table on functions that might explain why I like to stick with Snowden’s recommendation, Signal.:

Messengers and their Functions

By now, I am pretty sure COI will shake this chat world, the concept of using standard mail, mail servers and such as a basis looks very promising against the silos run by American data corporations.

Five great security tools: SecureDrop, PGP, Signal, OpenVPN and Haven

The Blog Choosetoencrypt has presented three great tools for encryption. Under the title “Three Ways To Communicate Anonymously and Privately Online” they present and evaluate SecureDrop for filesharing (like a whistleblower, not a pirate), PGP for E-Mail and Signal for Instant messaging.

SecureDrop or similar is a mandatory category of tools for those who are dealing with journalists and can’t afford to be tracked.

The instant messenger Signal is being used and recommended by Edward Snowden, I use it every day, with all my phone numbers.

And so do I use PGP every day – find my Key(s) on the servers, among many old and lost and expired ones … Yes, I did many trainings in my life :-(.

And I was happy to meet and interview PGP-founder Phil Zimmermann, in late 2013, while deep in the belly of an old container ship named San Diego in the Hamburg harbor.)

But I also want to add two more tools:

OpenVPN – the best VPN solution that’s around  – Not only because I authored the first book and am still offering classes, but also because I have been using it every day since 2003 without any major outages or problems.

Haven – Also comes with the strong recommendation of Edward Snowden. This tiny Android app turns your old smartphone into a NSA device. Well, just kidding – that has already happened when you first switched it on. No, with Haven your smartphone becomes a motion detector, sound or movement activated alarm system for your home, car, whatever. Free of charge, open source. Here’s a review Techcrunch: “Edward Snowden’s new app turns any Android phone into a surveillance system”.