List of Encrypted messagers

Communities Science, Engineering, & Security
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Here is a short list of my encrypted messagers. Feel free to add to this list. All of the messagers below use strong cryptography and have forward secrecy.

Signal

Pros:

  • Old and well proven
  • Most popular and well known
  • Usernames can help to protect phone numbers

Cons:

  • No F-droid version
  • Requires Phone number
  • Build with proprietary Google libraries
  • Dependent on Signal servers
  • has user identifiers

Molly

Pros:

  • Based on Signal (soft fork)
  • Foss version available that doesn’t depend on Google
  • Extra security features like App locking, local encryption, ram shredding and Tor support

Cons

  • Third party software not endorsed by Signal
  • Depends on Signal servers
  • has user identifiers
  • Requires phone number

Simplex Chat

Pros

  • Self hostable server software
  • Federated (mostly)
  • No user identifiers (invites happen via links)
  • Anonymous chats
  • Tor support
  • fully Foss

Cons

  • No usernames or other memorable identifiers

Briar

Pros:

  • Not dependent on any server
  • Works with Bluetooth, Wifi or Tor
  • Strong resistance to social engineering with trust levels
  • Has Forums, blogs and private messages
  • Briar Mailboxes allow for messages to be received even if device offline

Cons:

  • No voice messaging
  • Message delivery needs something to receive it
  • More complex setup
  • uses more battery (theoretically)
  • Designed for groups of people rather than 1 on 1

Out of all of these I would recommend either Molly or Simplex Chat. I like the fact that Simplex chat doesn’t allow spam but it is also harder to get people to use it. Signal is kind of the standard and I think it is a poor choice to try and change it.

I also really like the idea of Briar. Briar is a messager that is designed to be functional no matter what happens. It is really geared to protecting journalists, protesters or anyone being targeted by a nation state. It also seems like it would be suitable for emergency situations where internet is not available.

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Add another con to your list under Signal: Google scans everything you send on it for advertising and news feed.

One of its biggest pros for me that you didn’t list is I can use it on multiple platforms. It’s the easiest way for me to copy and paste a small amount of text, a picture, or most often URLs to send from my phone to my desktop or laptop and vice versa. Plus, I can be sitting at my desktop having a text conversation with a friend on a flight who uses an iPhone.

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XMPP (with OMEMO encryption)

Pros

  • Many free public servers as well as self hostable server software
  • Federated
  • Based on open standard, fully FOSS
  • Clients for all desktops (e.g. Gajim for Linux) and (working) clients for Android (Conversations - I think the pre-built version isn’t free though)
  • Both private conversations and group chats

Cons

  • Difficult to get people to use it
  • Apple and FOSS doesn’t work well together (apparently no working push notifications on Apple devices)
  • I’ve had issues using the same account simultaneously on multiple devices (messages not always synced between devices)
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I wouldn’t use XMPP personally since it is poor for both privacy and usability. It feels like something that should’ve been popular in the early 2000’s.

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What makes you say XMPP (with OMEMO) is poor for privacy?

(Usability is subjective I guess, but my experience is that it’s been working well.)

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Two things really.

First off it is dependent on DNS. This is bad for many reasons.

More importantly e2ee is not forced. You need to manually think about security and privacy which means there is a greater risk of getting it wrong. It also is not very use friendly since there are so many protocol variations, apps and servers. I want something that just works without hassle.

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