Wickr me note to self6/29/2023 This leads to lots of awesome privacy benefits, and prevents the formation of large data honeypots that might catch the eye of hackers - but it also leads to some added complexity over centralised solutions, like Signal. Session is decentralised, so its servers are owned and operated by lots of different people all over the world. In the case of Session, there is also something called time-to-live, which goes an extra step further. In the case of messengers like Signal and Session, you can rest easy knowing that any messages stored on server are encrypted, and can’t be read by the company at all. This is just a practical necessity for any (non peer-to-peer) messaging solution, there isn’t anything suspicious or nefarious about it, although if your messages are stored long-term-which is a common practice for things like cloud back-ups-then it could leave you vulnerable in case those servers are ever compromised for any reason. Message hoarders: Messaging apps that never forgetĮvery time you send a message using a messaging app, you actually send a message to that company’s servers, and they then forward that message onto your recipient. Sometimes this can be seen as a good thing, letting us look back at old messages and reminisce about the good ol’ days, but there is another, darker side to the coin.Īs long as that record exists, you’re effectively stuck trusting everyone you’ve messaged to keep that information private FOREVER! To be clear, I’m not saying you need to be wary of any Days of Our Lives style backstabs where your friends post your entire chat history online for all to see (although I’m also not saying you shouldn’t be worried), but there are lots of different ways that record could be compromised - by hacks, legal authorities, or a voluntary leak. My most active group chats can rack up tens of thousands of posts a year, and I’m in a bunch of them. Most people are carrying enormous records around with them in their pockets all the time, records of conversations from years, maybe even decades ago. Messaging apps can go to great lengths-using complicated encryption and networking protocols-to keep the info about you and your messages between you and your friends and family, but as long as that record exists in your DMs, there isn’t a 100% guarantee that info can’t (or won’t) be leaked. Each ding and buzz signals another entry into your digital record. Chats and channels with our friends, family, and work colleagues are flooding our notification centre at all hours of the day. Those details-like when a message is sent, who it’s sent to, and what’s in the message-can quickly paint a high fidelity picture about your life, especially when you consider just how many different conversations you’re having over text every single day. The record you create will persist long into the future, and there are a lot more details etched into that record that you’re probably not thinking about every time you send a ‘how’s it going’ or a ‘let’s catch up soon’. When you have a conversation over text, you’re creating a record. Digital conversations are fundamentally different to real-world conversations.
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