What’s the closest thing we have to a perfect private messanger?

In my mind the perfect private messanger is both completely secure, and also completely anonymous.

All the mainstream messengers can pretty much ensure the contents of the message will not be revealed…but that is not good enough. I want to be able to deploy and establish a completely anonymous AND private channel of communication on a dime without having to jump through extreme operational security hoops.

Does it really exist?

  • BCBoy911@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    Matrix gets a lot of flak from people for their constant protocol changes, de-facto centralization around matrix.org and Element etc… but I’m very happy with Matrix as an open, federated, encrypted and private messenger and I hope it gets more adoption.

  • Pearl@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    Can’t believe nobody brought up i2p.

    Messages sent through i2p in theory would be secure and anonymous. With an envelope anology, no way to tell if an envelope stops at a particular house or gets forwarded on, and also they can only see bags of envelopes and not a specific envelope.

  • balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one
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    3 days ago

    You need to define extreme operational security hoops.

    For me, meeting a human in person and scanning a qr code or relying on an out of band scheme to do the same is a huge hoop.

  • mistermodal@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    Lot of people mentioning SimpleX but I can’t imagine trying to make someone go online at the same time as me to start sending each other messages without being annoyed. It also relies on funding from the British state IIRC.

    On the other hand XMPP is a W3C internet standard, the server is super lightweight, plenty of tools and bridges work with it. Movim uses it, which is like an encrypted Mastodon where you can selectively make a post public but otherwise gates everything behind a login. Also you can send messages on the main phone network with the paid Cheogram service, but I realize that an unencrypted SMS relay is not a priority for everyone. I think it’s the bee’s knees.

  • Hellfire103@lemmy.ca
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    4 days ago

    SimpleX?

    Tox would also be fantastic, but they need to improve their encryption and get it audited. Also, some nicer UIs in the various clients would be nice.

  • solrize@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    I think you don’t want to know the real answer. It sounds like you want a phone app, but what you really have to do is flush your phone down the toilet and use a totally different approach. Also, there is absolutely no way to avoid difficult opsec. The communications technology is irrelevant since the greatest vulnerability in any security system is the people who use it. Do you think the private messenger software will free sessions with your therapist from spying? Guess again.

    As the saying used to go, you’re seeking a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem.

    • grey_maniac@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      Technically, you should keep your phone and run false, normie activities on it. Give it to someone else to use and move about while you’re actually operational so it remains actively pinging the world while you’re away from it. All while also using the real approach, but not within range of your phone, or any windows or apple hardware linked to you either.

  • irmadlad@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    At first I read ‘The Perfect Private Massager’

    You want both, a completely anonymous AND completely private channel of communications? I mean, not to sound sarcastic, when you find one, please do share. There are no absolutes. For every technology, there exists or will soon exist, an equal, yet undoing technology. I have amended this to exclude most strong ciphers as pointed out by one of the Lemmies here.