All you conversations
are belong to Route through our servers for the benefit of our friends.
In the same month Microsoft announced its alpha WebRTC-based Skype for Linux client, Redmond has put that native app and the native OS X Skype client on an end-of-life list. This is because Skype is being rebuilt to replace its peer-to-peer architecture with cloud-centric code that supports Windows, iOS, Android and web …
No, both Viber and WeChat REQUIRE your phone number.
So for privacy, the best thing is simply to use plain WebRTC through sites like appear.in (or plenty others). For that you just need a browser like Firefox or Chromium (not sure about M$ browsers because they alawys want their OWN "norm" like WenRTC does not please them, they did ORTC).
With WebRTC, if there is a direct route between the 2 callers, your browser will use that route, so that the initial server is used only for starting the conversation. If there is no direct route, WebRTC will use a relay, but as it is end-to-end encrypted, the relay has no way of knowing what is inside the packets it relays.
As for M$, it is absolutely sure they decrypt the conversation, otherwise how would you want them to do the feature: "adapt the bandwidth to each correspondent"... with WebRTC, there is no way you could do that, although they are bringing a feature comparable to "progressive JPEG" with video, so that the correspondents can adapt with their own bandwidth, at the price of lesser image quality.
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I just was about to install viber on my Android phone when I looked at what it needs to have access to !!!! Wow more likely what it doesn't need access to would be be a shorter list !
I will list the 3 main suspect ones it wants access to !
Device & app history ?
Wifi connection information ?
Bluetooth connection information ?
When I initially saw the list I looked at it carefully as I was worried if it wanted to know my penis size etc !
Skype has some good features, and I have some contacts over the years who still only use Skype so I try to keep it around.
Before the Microsoft acquisition, Skype was the best free multi-platform desktop sharing app. Once Microsoft bought it, they broke desktop sharing on Linux (not a surprise). There is plausible deniability that it was intentional, but I wouldn't be surprised either way.
With the new version, maybe the Linux version will reach feature parity with the others -- but it has a long way to go and I am quite skeptical.
Unfortunately, any "replacement" needs to be free and easily installable. It's not that I might not be willing to pay a modest fee for proper peace of mind, but one needs to be able to convince everybody else currently using Skype to convert to the replacement too, and that definitely won't fly if I need to tell them "well, if you want to keep talking to me just delete Skype and get a monthly SIP subscription then please follow this easy not-at-all technical 101-step tutorial on how to set up your phone to use it, I have another slightly longer one for your laptop..."
My first thought was this is so they can slurp your data to whore you to advertisers (and paying gov departments) just like Google do. And Win10 does.
Having thought about it a bit more, that is also my 2nd thought.
Edited to add: What are the real alternatives to Skype these days? Something that is cross-platform and not dependent on a big data-slurping company? Might be useful to know.
Wire (wire.com) has Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and web clients. It doesn't have Windows Phone but Windows Phone is deader than Skype. Microsoft can fragment Skype until it only works with Windows Desktop and Windows Phone and then they'll be utterly surprised to find that nobody is using it.
There's also appear.in which is web only, but it has the advantage of not having a crappy broken UI, unlike Skype.
Some potential alternatives could be ring.cx, Tox and retroshare. First two work decentralised with DHTs, and the last one is a bit older from an architectural point of view and voip + video is still an add on. Yet another alternative could be your favourite XMPP server + jingle.
None of the options above are as convenient or wide spread as Skype, but maybe one of them can get a foot hold and become a new standard? Would be nice, but I doubt it.
None of the options above are as convenient or wide spread as Skype ...
Not at the moment but now that Microsoft have signalled the end to Skype on Mac, which is now a significant market, I do not think it will take long for someone to take its place. Gone are the days when then can get away with this sort of thing because "everyone uses Windows".
Is anyone using Linphone? It seems to run on just about every sensible platform, both desktop and mobile. It does messaging, audio and video calling and is apparently fully encrypted. The mobile clients are nice, but the desktop ones are a little clunky, unfortunately. It could possibly use some developer and donation help, but it does seem to be the most multi-platform system out there, although it seems to be little known.
https://www.linphone.org/
Or Signal (only iOS and Android, though)? One of its developers is Moxie Marlinspike, who is someone who seems to know his stuff about security, which is a scarily complicated field (although these days you almost wonder who is actually for real and who is potentially a false flag agent, and how would you know…?).
https://whispersystems.org/
I've had that on my system for years, but never made anything but a few test calls. Currently I'm trying ekiga instead, which seems to have fewer dependencies, which makes getting to the point of making a test call easier. :-)
I'm no fan of skype, but since that's all anyone else wants to use, I seem to be stuck with it.
Ekiga seemed fairly polished the last time I looked at it on Linux, but the snag is that it's Linux and Windows only, so it can't be recommended for everyone, unfortunately.
The difficulty is that, for universal interoperability (or as close as possible), everyone needs to be using the same communication and encryption protocols, which often seems to mean using the same app, as they sadly all seem to be inventing multiple incompatible wheels! If SIP + ZRTP are appropriate and also secure open standards then maybe there could be hope that whatever app a given person is using would be unimportant.
Linphone is in the Ubuntu repo which makes it easy to install. Unfortunately, I have never been able to use video with it, although audio works well with the SIP account given by my ISP (and I could capture incoming calls to my home phone when I'm out).
Signal from whispersystems... how can you seriously claim promote privacy when the first thing you ask is your phone number! So if you ask me, this so-called "security expert" is a phony.
"how can you seriously claim promote privacy when the first thing you ask is your phone number! So if you ask me, this so-called "security expert" is a phone."
But privacy doesn't automatically need to mean anonymity does it?
Keen as I am on protecting peoples privacy, anonymity seems a little more problematic.
I refused to use Skype since it was bought by Microsoft. However, I might consider using its cloud version if no Microsoft code needs to be installed. I am fully aware "all your talks are belong to Redmont (and some government agencies)" but at least I would know when they spy on me.
I refused to use Skype since it was bought by Microsoft. However, I might consider using its cloud version if no Microsoft code needs to be installed.
I wouldn't if I were you. I entertain myself with demonstrating to lawyers and people in finance that Skype is intercepted - it's quite fun to see their faces go white when they see live evidence :)
ever, because I never trusted the people who made it.
They paid for building Skype with money they made off the Kazaa P2P network (so dirty money from hacking, malware and piracy). I did perhaps have a grudge because I had to retro-engineer their on the wire protocols and deal with their wacky roll-your-own encryption system, that changed _constantly_.
It was therefore not surprising to me that they bit the hand that fed them by suing the people who made them billionaires. They tried to claim they transferred the Key IP rights on their P2P networks software to one of their endless shell companies, Joltid, and sued for copyright infringement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/technology/companies/17skype.html
If enough people are worried about it, there are plenty of other options. The only value Skype has had for a long time is it's ubiquity. And ubiquity only gets you so far. ICQ, AIM, Yahoo... all had their days in the sun, and all fell behind. Skype is never going to become a single defacto solution like the POTS phone system was. Too many other Islands and walled gardens, like Facebook Messenger or Facetime/iMessage. Add that to cell phones, texts, email, Slack, maybe a ticket system or two, and our immediate future looks like something from Snowcrash. Fragmentation and information overload.
I believe anything you tell me of course, but in order to convince other people, would you share a demo' of it, or the recipe, or somesuch, please?
I'm busy getting Skype Luxembourg to give me a formal explanation why they do it. So far, they've tried playing games with me, so now it will progress to the Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection because if they're hoping I will let this lie they're seriously mistaken.
Oh, and I tend to demonstrate this live in front of audiences mainly composed of lawyers. Lawyers not only like facts and evidence, they also talk to their customers who tend to listen as they pay for their time..
Skype isn't P2P any more, everything's been going through MS' supernodes for a few years, and messages can blocked (e.g. you type a link to a phishing website that's on their list) so they know the contents of messages too. They're not going to change that with the move to web clients.
Today, peer-to-peer IMs use AES 256 encryption while IMs passed through cloud use TLS.
AES 256 is an encryption algorithm while TLS is an encryption protocol (which includes a mechanism for selecting an algorithm, which is fairly unlikely, today, to be anything other than AES 256 but could be something weaker or stronger).
You're comparing chalk with ... not cheese, but with some method for selecting a piece of chalk.