[DELISTED] Discussion: Wire

Privacy Tools
#23

I’ve been using Wire for year and a half now. Though with only few people, as all the others use WhatsApp and/or Viber. I stopped using Viber some time ago, and hope Facebook will introduce ads to Whatsapp, so I’ll have easy explanation why I need to delete WA.

There are some issues (with notifications) recently, but I hope it’ll be resolved soon. In my opinion, it is the best overall IM/VoIP software at the moment, though I would be happy to use any other (Signal, Riot, XMPP w. OMEMO, Keybase…) if any of my friends or family members were willing to ditch Whatsapp/Viber.

The only concern regarding Wire is - it might not be possible to use it on Librem5, or Pinephone or something similar, if I switch from Android.

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#24

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

#25

Grayscale - neat idea!

Ah I didn’t realise that. I can’t afford a Librem5 phone anyway, for $25 I just got myself a rooted (LineageOS) Motorola smart phone, for testing and possibly to replace my iphone (not a minute too soon, cant wait to get rid!)

#26

If the current news are correct, I fear that won’t be easy explanation as most of users aren’t probably even going to see them.

I recommend the book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, I got encouragement from it to delete accounts I am unhappy with and that other people “force” me to use. It named WhatsApp a few times as a data collection vacuumer (sorry for weird words en->fi->en translation by me) that is going to be used for manipulation in Facebook’s other “services”.

I think it has been two weeks since I left Facebook WhatsApp and so far one of my support network contacts has moved to Signal and I expect their example to be helpful for recommending the others to join it too.

(My family is on Wire and going to stay there until Wire does something horribly wrong and Signal preferably becomes more friendly for multiple devices e.g. by making a tablet version of Signal desktop.)

Edit: my second suggestion to Signal is already suggested by others on the Signal user forum:

#27

I just installed user-agent switcher on Firefox for Android, and managed to log in to Wire web :slight_smile: Though it can’t be used this way as IM on mobile devices. Still, I hope it might be in some way usable on other devices (linux-based mobile OS). I actually prefer to use PC for IM, no matter what software it is. So as long as I can read messages on the phone, I’m fine with it :smiley:

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#28

I have found someone who can (and will) set up a server for me with an installation of Matrix/Synapse/Riot. I am not tech enough to know, but I am curious so I will ask in case anyone here has the knowledge to make a judgement on this…

What would be more secure and private? Wire, or Matrix self-hosted?

(I would throw SIgnal in, but that’s a moot point because Signal wants my phone number and ain’t NEVER gettin it :D)

#29

Welcome to the community, Stan!!

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#30

Thanks.

I also just found “Silent Phone”. It’s Android and iOS only and I want a desktop machine app ideally, but in case anyone has any knowledge of it i thought i would mention it,.

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#31

Oh, it’s by Silent Circle? I like them! You mean this, right? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.silentcircle.silentphone&hl=en

#32

And what’s the alternative to a messenger app having your phone number? Does Matrix/Riot ask for it as well? (I forget; haven’t used it for some time.)

#33

Most don’t need a phone number. Have you heard of email? :smiley:

Wire is nice, no phone number. Hell even Skype didn’t need my phone number!

#34

You already asked that :slight_smile:

Do you trust them absolutely? They will probably need to keep maintaining it unless you will step in at that point and they will have access to the messages (even if E2EE ones are unreadable) and they could do a mistake or be malicious or…

If you click advanced settings and erase identity server in Riot, you will not have to enter phone not email. (And if you did, you would receive error about the identity server, same if the identity server went down as it’s centralized.)

Wire also allows registration by email insteadof a phone number.

By the way, I think there have been a lot of chats in this thread and some of them aren’t related to Wire. I wonder if there are some buttons I should click to move some to other topics, possibly new ones so this would be more clear for new readers.

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#35

I guess you’re right - conversations tend to go off on tangents sometimes, you know? StanTheMan had mentioned Silent Phone - perhaps there should be a thread about that. :slight_smile:

#36

Good question Mikaela - and yes I definitely do. Having said that, I would still rather run it myself, but I have some serious learning to do first. I could ask them to start it, and then take over as my education allows :smiley:

Side note (at risk of going in a tangent again) - Makaela you speak quite highly of XMPP on your personal page and on some of these threads. It always seemed too complicated but IF it can audio/video calls, I might take a look at it as I just found Conversations.im and they seem to explain it a bit easier. I THINK I am right in saying all I need to do is:

Sign up for XMPP account
Choose a client for each device (Aium for Mac, for example)
Sign in and chat, untick OTR logs so no logs are stored

And I THINK that would mean it’s probably even more private/secure than Matrix/Riot. Would you agree with that, or no? thanks as always.

#37

Did you see this page?

https://xmpp.org/getting-started/

XMPP can do voice/video, but not all the clients can and it’s somewhat rare featue. I have heard that Atalk can do it, but I just received a screenshot of issue with it disabling all media features.

  1. Yes
  2. I am not sure on Adium, isn’t it like Pidgin, so it might not support XMPP that well, but in general yes.
  3. Everyone uses OMEMO instead of OTR and I am not sure they have separate opton for that and Conversations defaults to trying OMEMO already.

I am under impression that it collects less data than Matrix and has actual storage periods for things like logs instead of e.g. keeping deleted file uploads in the database forever.

#38

Interesting thanks! Maybe I will just skip over Matrix and go to XMPP. More research to do first, mainly on features as Matrix may well take the biscuit there.

OMEMO - Oh yes, I heard that’s a much better system to use too, so I would be happy to use that.

#39

Shoot me a PM sometime. This is something I’m strongly considering starting in the next months: Turnkey hosting Mastodon, Matrix, XMPP, Discourse, […]?

#40

As far as I see on wire.com, Wire’s no longer free software, all the plans are paid-for.

Why it’s still listed on PrivacyTools.io?

#41

It’s not super clear to find but here’s a link to it: https://wire.com/en/products/personal-secure-messenger/

It’s in the footer called “Wire Personal.”

4 Likes
#42

Thanks for the prompt response. Indeed, there’s, just not too obvious.

I wonder, how many people tried to build and use their own Wire server, out of source?