Would love others opinion on this. What is your go to messenger with family? I dont like Signal because I dont want to be tied down to a phone number. Is Threema unsafe? nostr:note13qv5a7yd3hwjmeegc2fmfrjpehzpjjjvlm6d76feg4kak8j7v4pqs2hqx5
Discussion
Used Telegram for ages, which I trust only moderately.
Then I set up my own mailserver and started handing out new email addresses to family members. Surprisingly, the uptake has been good. Even old ppl can email.
Why does it even matter wether it's a honeypot or not?
The client app code is public and auditable. You can even use a fork such as Molly. The client uses standard encryption cryptography that anyone can verify.
The only thing you might giving up to a potential honeypot is metadata. Is that bad? Yes. Is it still better to use Signal with normies rather than Telegram, iMessage, Facebook, whatsapp, etc? Absolutely.
Normies won't use SimpleX, Threema, Session, Matrix or XMPP. If you want to be a social human you need to compromise and just be aware of what you are potentially exposing.
I think it matters out of principal. I would also assume if it is a honeypot, there would be more zero day exploits being used. This would make it not e2ee at all. I also cannot read code to verify myself.
You can apply that concern to pretty much any piece of software that gathers enough attention.
You can't review the code but plenty of others do, that is one of the advantages of foss software.
Discouraging use because of potential 0-days is as pure FUD as it gets.
Plenty of people parrot the same honypot routine about Tor, PGP, etc. It's not novel or insightful, it just discourages newcomers from actually being pragmatic and objectively improving their privacy and opsec.
I'd prefer if everyone used SimpleX and have it use a Tor proxy, but even just SimpleX would be nice.