obtainuim looks really useful for keeping these updated, but is there a reason they aren’t just on f-droid? until now I thought that was considered the norm or standard for open source android apps
F-Droid either requires app developers to set up their own repository (and point users to them) or to follow the F-Droid repo rules (the F-Droid devs compile and sign your app, not you)
You definitely shouldn’t invest time in SMS. Without RCS (or some custom messaging protocol support), “texting apps” are pretty much a dead market.
RCS is both more secure and more user friendly than SMS can be by design. Once the iPhone gets RCS support in the coming months/years, this will be especially true.
If you message cross-platform from Android to iOS, and you can’t get everyone to agree upon a 3rd party app, then you’re kind of stuck with sms. This isn’t a problem that is going away in the near future. Apple relies on their locked messaging platform to influence their users into thinking iOS is the best. The users then pressure all of their friends to get iPhones too. It’s an effective strategy for them. Very few iPhone users seem to understand the games being played.
In fairness, even the author of the article you linked didn’t think that’d ever happen. I’m somewhat up to date on most general tech things and missed this announcement too (though to be honest I don’t follow Apple announcements anyway).
You’re right, I’ve updated my reply… Hopefully someday that will be a generic RCS feature not exclusive to Google and/or Apple and Google will work to make the E2EE work between their two systems.
Plenty of services still unfortunately rely on SMS for 2FA, so we’ll still need a client to receive them. Doesn’t really need to be able to send them though, I don’t think any human has sent an SMS message deliberately for about 12 years!
I don’t know anyone in Canada that isn’t a new Canadian that uses anything other than the default sms app on their phone. (FBM and Insta and what not don’t count in my example).
I don’t know about the underlying technology, but every client I’ve used for the past couple decades supported groups.
However, they absolutely sucked. There was no way to leave. Unless someone made a new group without you and everyone used that, you’d keep getting messages.
More seriously, in these cases, I often rely on emails instead. But I don’t really use group chats a lot (even with my contacts that are on Signal), nor send many files, so it’s not features I really miss. And SMS works with everyone, so it’s always my default if the contact isn’t on Signal.
Group chats work over SMS. I use cloud links for large files or just SMS/MMS for pictures and you just live with the low quality if texting with an iPhone user.
I don’t think there’s a factual answer to this question.
My take on it though is why would they delete it? They can make use of it in various ways, and in new ways every once in a while, and it’s not like as if you could prove it in court or even just find out that they didn’t delete your data.
You should be safe if you are the only one with access to that computer.
If you are sharing the computer with another human being; please Unplug your Yubikey and take it with you when you are not using the computer and it is likely that another human being could be using the computer. Just to be safe; Do Not Leave Your Yubikey Plugged In If Another Person Is Using It…unless you’re authorizing them to access something.
Your Yubikey can’t tell who clicked it’s button as it is NOT a Fingerprint Reader.
On a grandfathered visionary 2 year payment plan with a year remaining, so no change plans yet, but I’m keeping a list of annoyances and concerns for renewal considerations.
Email
Really want snooze/delayed email reminders for specific emails. What Mailbox from Dropbox? used to have, and Inbox had before it was merged with Gmail.
Annoyed I can’t delete pre-proton pass aliases
No android (bidirectional) contact syncing. Been using EteSync.
Have multiple family members on the plan
Calendar
Use daily. I had issues with the number of clicks it took when adding emailed invites that didn’t get picked up automatically. Have not noticed in awhile if this is still an issue but I also don’t get as many invites.
Passwords
I use BitWarden
Been using Proton Pass aliases, but I’m on the fence due to it creating a vendor lock-in situation
VPN
Use ProtonVPN for port forwarding situations.
Use Mullvad otherwise as my daily driver.
Drive
Proton - I use if I need to share a file with someone else in a pinch
rclone/b2 - Main off-site backup solution with my own encryption keys. RoundSync for android to backup my phone to b2.
I tried rclone proton support the week it was merged. Worked okay. I tried syncing some ISO backups though and it just sat forever. Didn’t troubleshoot and just kept using b2.
I don’t know how much content there is to share, so you might be overflowing with things to talk about every week. But I fear that doing so much effort weekly could be unsustainable. I would suggest, or hope you consider, a less freqent blog/podcast, like every other week. I think this would be more modest, and easier to maintain. You wouldn’t need to change to title of the blog, either.
Anyway, this is an exciting project and I’m thankful for your work.
It should be safe. It only shares the secrets with legit domains. That’s one of the powers of this tech: it won’t share your secrets with something that looks like a legit domain.
No, some of the functionality is definitely accessible without that, e.g. if you use ykman oath accounts code on Linux to read the TOTP codes you don’t need to click and I seem to recall some of the functionality has a configurable click requirement.
Would be nice if it was possible to subscribe to en email to receive this blog automatically. Also, would be nice to post youtube links via piped or some other front-end app, since its about privacy :)
yeah never used that to be honest, I guess I have a reason to check it out. Still, to reach people a newsletter straight into an inbox is better. What RSS is recommended?
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