TextSecure VS bbs

Moxie's reasons for disallowing Signal distribution via F-droid always rang a little flat to me ( https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/127 ). Lots of chatter about the supposedly superior security model of Google Play Store, and as a result fewer eyes independently building and testing the Signal code base. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but independent and reproducible builds seem like a net positive for everyone. Always struggled to understand releasing code as open source without taking advantage of the community's willingness to build and test. Looking at it in a new light after the XZ backdoor, and Jia Tan's interactions with other FOSS folk.

Signal has documentation on how to reproduce their Play Store builds and compare them with what you've installed locally:

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/main/reprod...

There's nothing on Signal blog as of yet, but Signal's git repository was tagged with v7.0.0 yesterday and we can see from the commit history since the previously tagged version (v6.74.4) that there will be a setting to hide one's phone number [1], as well as disabling the previous default behavior of advertising that one is on Signal to all their contacts already using it [2].

[1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/8797236b5... (PNP stands for "Phone Number Privacy")

[2] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/6097e6c30...

Signal works the same but without the user tracking from Meta/Facebook. Many people use it as well but I'm surprised that a majority sticks to WhatsApp.

Telegram and Signal solve this.

Sadly yes: Looks like an open issue 13290 for Signal, sounds like they were/are indeed still interacting through google's push notification service, wat, and per a link at that issue it was a chore for Tutanota to break away once they realised it was a problem some years ago (though at least they thought about it years ago? wtf Signal...)

Here is one: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/tree/main/reprod...

Rule 1: Posts to r/signal must relate to Signal.

https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/63

People should be aware that privacy tools can make you stand out. Unless methods are used to obfuscate your data.

I never trusted Signal due to https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/60

VPNs are totally detectable - its your traffic eg what ur searching up that is hard or impossible to decrypt. to make the VPN TRAFFIC itself undetectable, you have to obfuscate it. Now there could be a lot of reasons as to how your school blocked your vpn. The ports expressvpn use may have been blocked, for example. I personally don't use express vpn but use my own, but protocols like wireguard which MAY (im not sure) be used by express vpn use udp packets and the school could have just completely dropped them completely (Most games use udp packets since its faster), or the ip ranges you have been assigned on expressvpn may have just been blocked from the school wifi. As for why the cheap free vpn may be able to bypass your school wifi, it could be that it avoids the reasons above OR its something different like a proxy, which is what I use to bypass the restrictions at my high school. The fix, or what I do, is I setup my own servers. The price of a vps server at digital ocean is like 4 dollars a month, probably around the same price if not cheaper than expressvpn. Get yourself one, setup your own proxy server and connect to that. You can search around for tutorials, but the one I use is VMESS+TCP, essentially disguising the proxy traffic as a tcp packet so that the school can't distinguish it from regular traffic. Find a tutorial online, probably ask around on here: https://github.com/net4people/bbs If you followed a guide and still can't get it to work, your gna have to find an unblocked port. I would try 443 or 123 first since usually those aren't blocked but for my school 3478 is the one that works.