I Love Computers and Technology

Was looking for the right place to post this... here is good. A lot of people are asking if I use Kik, or saying they use Kik. So I've lived into it a bit.. and if you think in terms of privacy (important when talking with strangers on the internet), you may want to try alternatives. So I've done a bit of digging and, after putting aside the really insecure stuff (fb messenger, Skype, kik, snapchat) and pretty secure stuff (whisper, secret, telegram) I've settled on Threema. It's cheap, great reviews, minimal data stored (can skip giving them phone numbers and whatever), and it's not US based so no men in suits showing up and demanding all their user data. Not open source (sad) but externally reviewed so.. good enough for now. Tried it out last week, very quick setup and easy to use. If you prefer something else let me know what it is and why?

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persistentone22 · M

Most of those people asking you for Kik are fakes (men pretending to be women, or women far different than their advertised profile), so factor that into the equation too....

I went through a similar exercise and I also reject the obvious choices like Kik, for security reasons. Why do you reject Skype? Is their messenger a point to point application that exposes IPs? Almost everyone I know who wants to chat uses Skype, and because of the pressure I get from women on this I want to understand that app better. To be honest, the kind of women who typically pressure me on this I have 95% proof are real and harmless, so the lack of privacy becomes less of an issue for me.

The application I found that looks very impressive is VIPole. That includes text messaging as well as voice and video chat, all secure. Their servers are in Great Britain however.

You are fooling yourself if you think any of this security protects you from a government. The fact that you are communicating through a server outside the US actually means you become a point of interest for the government, and they may have means to break your encryption. So I think that is not the right way to think about it. The right way to think about this problem is that you do not want messages in the clear for individuals who capture information somewhere in the middle. For example, I once chatted a lady and the administrator of the system read all our messages, got her phone number, and started making "whisper voice" calls to her, claiming to be me. That was a nightmare to unravel. A good encryption solution for email and text and voice chat would make such a privacy theft impossible for everyone except a government.

Maybe after you look at VIPole you could write a review comparing it against Threema?