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signal w (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.world
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mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mshelton/116214301513839946

article: https://signal.org/bigbrother/district-of-columbia/

context: https://technologymagazine.com/cloud-and-cybersecurity/protonmail-under-fire-over-data-handover

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[–] 24 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Proton was legally forced to record IPs for this account (as per the linked article). Theoretically that could happen to Signal just as well if the laws allow it in their jurisdiction. There was nothing in the article about message content or metadata being handed over to authorities.

As far as I know in France you can‘t have an anonymous phone number so technically using TOR and Proton Mail you can achieve a higher level of privacy than with Signal

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Huh wait does using Tor actually help with mail privacy in any way? I know Tor hides pretty much as much as can be hidden about the user, but for mailing, don't you need to give out your personal details to sign up regardless?

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    But Signal is legal in France, so what would be the point? There's no need to hide that you're using it.

    Also, that wouldn't give you a higher level of privacy. Email records a lot of metadata unencrypted: The sender, recipient, subject line, and time sent. That's way more compromising than the fact that you're using Signal.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Fair point, and it seems like I was wrong about the phone numbers in France. If you can use an anonymous prepaid phone number, it makes sense to use Signal + TOR. But in many European countries, even though Signal is legal, you have to provide your legal ID to get a phone number, so your Signal account is never anonymous, as opposed to a free Proton Mail address, which you can create without providing any information.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (2 children)

    A non-anonymous Signal account still gives you more privacy than an anonymous Proton Mail account.

    All Signal can tell the authorities is the fact that your phone number was used to register a Signal account, the date (and time) that happened, and the date (and time) the account last connected to the Signal servers. In a country where you're allowed to use Signal, that information cannot hurt you.

    Proton (and every "private" email provider), on the other hand, has much of that same information (when an account was registered and when it last connected to the server) plus the date and time each individual email was sent, its recipient, and its subject line. And if the email was sent to, or came from, someone who isn't using an encrypted email provider, the authorities will know who to serve a subpoena to to find an unencrypted copy of it. (!!!) That's all infinitely more dangerous than the knowledge that you have a Signal account. And all the authorities need to do to get it is find out your Proton Mail address.

    It doesn't make sense under any coherent threat model to use "anonymous" (that amount of metadata would eventually deanonymise you anyway) "encrypted" email instead of Signal in a country where Signal is legal. You would be making yourself less safe for no reason.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah, okay, fair point. I guess it depends on the use case. For general communication, you’re absolutely right, but in the article, it said he was a climate activist, and I imagine I‘d rather use a separate anonymous email address to organise and demonstrate than an account linked to my phone number and through that to my identity.

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