Replying to Avatar ODELL

founder of simplex chat on why he is not integrating mls:

https://www.poberezkin.com/posts/2025-08-12-mls-the-naked-king-of-end-to-end-encryption.html

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Vitor Pamplona 4mo ago 💬 4

nostr:nprofile1qqspwwwexlwgcrrnwz4zwkze8rq3ncjug8mvgsd96dxx6wzs8ccndmcprpmhxue69uhkv6tvw3jhytnwdaehgu3wwa5kuef0qyv8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytngv9ekscnpdenjumnv9uq32amnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwv3sk6atn9e5k7tcwlfhcq nostr:nprofile1qqst0mtgkp3du662ztj3l4fgts0purksu5fgek5n4vgmg9gt2hkn9lqpypmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuetfde6kuer6wasku7nfvuh8xurpvdjj7qglwaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8gmmhv9exgumvd93x2un50yhxxmmd9uqsuamnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dshsy7xvzx

I am curious about this statement: A notable exception here is Nostr-based WhiteNoise that avoids the need for an authentication service, relying on user identities being their public keys. The main downside of WhiteNoise remains the lack of participation privacy, as relays have knowledge of all groups where the user participates.↩︎

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Ben Arc 4mo ago

But the beauty being you can infinite identities, or use a repay by a memeber of the group. Everyone in a group knows you are in a group after all, if you don't one someone knowing you're in a group, use a different identity. Does whitenoise have invite only groups? You could trampoline hop into an anon group and use public relays if you were lazy.

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water783 4mo ago 💬 1

Only happens on relays that require auth?

In nip-ee, both the sender and the receiver can be random pubkeys.

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reis 4mo ago 💬 1

Can't relays sniff something from the combination of auth, welcome event, group ID, and IP address?

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water783 4mo ago 💬 1

If a relay requires auth, then yes — it could sniff some information. As for the other points:

– The welcome event is wrapped in a NIP-17 DM, so it’s not linked to the MLS group.

– Group IDs can be rotated, even per message.

– IPs can be hidden by using the Tor network.

Also, some information can be obtained from the req, but auth is required to identify the sender.

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reis 4mo ago

Thanks for elaborating. Ultimately, it means each group should use its own relay.

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JeffG 4mo ago

So - we don't have the AS issue because Nostr is our AS. We use pubkeys verify authenticity and you're trusting the key package events signed by those keys when you're adding someone to a group.

AFAICT, the participation privacy question is about relays being able to see what groups you're in by seeing what group IDs you're requesting. I believe that we've mitigated this pretty well since we're using random (and rotating) identifier(s) for each group (yes, it can be more than one).

We also want to eventually break up the requests into lots of different reqs/subscriptions (probably done over Tor or something similar) to further obfuscate this info.