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

I laughed when I saw some of the tools available to help secure private messaging tools:
https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/how-use-otr-windows

While this works if you have two motivated people, the problem is that one end of the conversation might be an unsophisticated user. Just motivating that unsophisticated user to follow the complex install and authentication procedures above would take a long time. I generally find when women do want to chat with me, they have almost zero patience in changing their unsecure computer habits. And - ironically - if you are a person who cares about security and privacy, you are immediately treated with suspicion.

It's very difficult to get all of the moving pieces to work.