It’s based on Signal protocol and it’s also open source. However, unlike Signal it doesn’t harvest phone numbers.
It has been a while since I looked at Wire, but self-hosting was unavailable at the time.
I believe they violated their privacy policy a while back, by accepting new owners/investors without notifying their users. That kind of behavior is telling of what to expect from an organization.
I have read complaints that they stored contact lists on the server in cleartext, but I haven’t verified this myself. (No need to spend time on that, since lack of self-hosting was already a dealbreaker for me.)
Looks like both the client and server are open source now, so it’s definitely possible to self host. Unlike Signal, Wire also supports federation nowadays https://docs.wire.com/understand/federation/index.html
Because Signal is awesome and the gold standard for privacy
That is not the reason: Signai is very good but it’s not the best. The reason why it’s more popular is because it’s good, ubiquitous and easy to install.
In other words, it’s a well-known app you can confidently tell your computer idiot friends and family to install on their phone and start communicating with them 5 minutes later. What’s what makes it popular.
Signal is nowhere close to being popular.
Telegram has almost 1 billion users, which is why governments are unhappy with it. Signal is a niche toy for a very small number of people.
I think it may depend on where you are. Back when Whatsapp went belly up, myself, my entire family, and every other person I know IRL switched over to signal within a week, so I think it may be more popular than you expect, though still not as popular as Telegram as you noted.
They don’t even bother reporting Signal usage, it’s a round off error: https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-global-mobile-messenger-apps/
Telegram has almost 1 billion users, half as many as WhatsApp
When it was sms compatible it was a suuuuper easy sell for my family
“It’s way more secure when you text me but you can still text everyone else you know too. And we can still use it through wifi if cell service isn’t available.”
🤣
I’m not using Signal until it’s on F-Droid.
You don’t even need a store, you can install through the apk here https://signal.org/android/apk/
Signal’s hostility to F-Droid is the problem.
Care to expand on what you mean by that?
they’re not hostile… they don’t see the reason for them and it’s not as clear cut as you’re making it out in favour of f-droid
Because Google’s monopoly on the appstore is just great, right?
they have apks
which still use Google services.
that would do it
One more step
Please complete the security check to access
Does Wire still store metadata on who you message? That seems potentially more damaging than Signal’s phone number requirement, at least since the switch to being able to hide your number from everyone.
Wire doesn’t require any personally identifying data to register though.
Your right, they could just read any of your messages if they feel like it however. Wouldn’t you rather have a phone number associated with an unreadable account? Or no “personally identifying info (besides your entire device…)” but Wire can read and see all of what you send.
Given that Wire uses Signal protocol, are you suggesting that e2e encryption in Signal is not secure?
No, what I’m saying is that if Wire still sends the passwords for the encryption in plaintext to their servers, thats bad. Signal doesn’t do that afaik.
I agree that would be a weird thing to do, is there a source for this?
Definitely search on your own, I was only going based off this. Could be fixed by now!
But if it was ever true, that’s again, bad. Not something you would even think of doing if your true motives are “privacy”
Huh, never really looked into Wire but it seems like its a great option and now im wondering why people bother with signal or matrix if this can do both encryption and federation
Federation sounded interesting so I looked at the website and it sounds like on prem can’t yet federate with people using “cloud” which I guess is the hosted version - they can only federate with other on-prem instances.
It looks promising though and would be cool to host my own instance and still chat with friends.
I find this site useful to compare messengers. I would trust Wire a tad more because it’s hosted in a country with stronger GDPR regulation, vs Signal being hosted in the US.
For my needs, XMPP with Omemo has been unbeatable for a long time
yeah that’s a good overview of different protocols/messengers
wire is US-based these days AFAIK - they accepted a bunch from VC money from a firm that does things like data mining and moved to the US
Ok, in like 2 seconds of looking into Wire I see that the app is rated 2.8 stars to Signal’s 4.5 and under the “data collected” section it lists name, email, phone number, user ID, photos, and videos. Signal lists phone number.
All you need to create an account is a username and password, so not sure where your name, email, and phone number will come from.
Looks like it is listed on the iOS App Store ‘App Privacy’ section for the Wire app.
it’s not information that’s required to make an account though 🤷
