from techwooded@lemmy.ca to privacy@lemmy.ml on 23 Mar 14:29
https://lemmy.ca/post/62229642
Hey everyone, I’m considering moving my cell phone number over to being a VoIP number with JMP.chat. Unfortunately, a lot of my family members are not the most privacy focused people in the world (they’re the “they already have my data so it doesn’t matter” types). Over the past few years, I’ve been fighting the good fight and managed to get a few of them over to using Signal and some even on Matrix, but for the vast majority of them, they still only text. They almost all use Apple products, so because I still use iPhone (switching to Graphene with my next phone), most of our conversations are via iMessage. My question is which would be more private/secure? Leaving my number as is with the cell carrier and texting via iMessage or switching my number to JMP and texting via SMS?
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I don’t think there is any E2EE between a JMP number and an iPhone. Cheogram offers E2EE, but I think it is just between Cheogram clients. Although I have never used iMessage (or iOS), I believe it is E2EE between iMessage clients, so if all your family members are on iMessage, then may be staying on that will offer you better security compared to Cheogram.
That said, I know GrapheneOS has been working on RCS (although I do not use it). I have seen some of these RCS updates on their changelog, and some users report that it works too (see github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/…/6173 for example). So, may be you can ask your family members to turn RCS on, and use it to securely communicate between GrapheneOS and iOS?!
It’s sort of a loaded question. Depends on threat model and what you’re trying to accomplish. Apple is frequently the “good enough… I guess” privacy and security choice, believe it or not, but heavily skewed towards security. And at the end of the day, iPhone privacy comes with an asterisk that Apple may keep others from spying at a mildly acceptable level, but Apple themselves will know a LOT about you. iMessage is E2EE (from iPhone to iPhone) but do you trust the trillion dollar company to not have a backdoor? I don’t, they’ve proven they scan content in messages.
You can mitigate privacy AND security concerns with GrapheneOS on Android. I do this and use JMP instead of Google Messages/RCS. You could also try a Linux phone, but usability has mixed reviews. These are the best options.
If that’s not an option, it’s almost better to just stick with iPhone, since other custom ROMs often have security tradeoffs in the name of privacy, and stock Android has HUGE privacy tradeoffs in the name of security.
So, assuming you are sticking with iPhone. iMessage is more secure than SMS, no doubt there. And since SMS security is not there, the privacy of the content of the messages are in question if it is intercepted. Although, these days, intercepting SMS usually require a targeted attack, and targeted attacks are almost always through social engineering. Note that iMessage will also use SMS if texting a non iPhone. But it is more common to go iPhone to iPhone vs using an app with XMPP to another app using XMPP, so in practice iMessage is more secure. Features are slightly better on iMessage. Sometimes I miss being able to edit my texts, not having them be split up into multiple messages, and group chat is slightly simpler (assuming everyone is on iMessage, if not it goes right back to the same functionality)
Are you worried about approximate location data from your mobile provider? If so, JMP is a great choice for that, since you can sign up for some carriers anonymously, and you won’t be using the phone number they provide to you. You can even get a data only Sim card. JMP almost entirely prevents SIM swaps. It’s harder for governments to pull your cellular location data and tie it to you, though they can get it from Apple depending on the situation and if they know to look specifically for you. Some websites scan your device info, which can include your SIM phone number. Even JMP itself, when I went to sign up, offered me numbers to choose from that were the same area code as my SIM card number. Only…I specifically picked an area code for a state I’ve never been to. So if you use that SIM number, many sites that will be able to tie it to your real name from public records or people search sites. Lastly, JMP can give you multiple numbers for half the price of the first, which can be pretty useful for dating new people you don’t trust yet, spam, restaurant wait lists, calling a company anonymously, selling stuff locally, etc.
Money wise it is about the same. JMP costs extra money on top of your separate SIM bill, but since you don’t care about your SIM number, you can constantly get new customer deals that usually last up to a year, and further obscures your cellular location history.
All of this assumes you have a factory unlocked phone. If it is locked to a big name carrier, it becomes harder to sign up anonymously. If you have a carrier locked phone, may as well stick with iMessage.
Tl;Dr: JMP is a fairly significant privacy boost at a slight security decrease and slight feature loss, but there’s a lot more to it.