This sounds like what Element has been doing for years already. You can sign up with an email and optionally link a phone number to your account. When WhatsApp does it though, it’s newsworthy.
I know Signal is technically better but Telegram provides a much better user experience than Signal or WhatsApp and is also less problematic than WhatsApp.
Telegram is a decent middle ground. UI/UX matters, I’m not sure how the folks at Signal are completely missing that point.
The Signal UI is OK, as a competitor to SMS. But it’s terrible compared to Telegram. This matters to non-technical people, it’s how you get them to use it. Plus the seamless connection between devices - that’s crucial. I can chat using whatever device is in front of me.
I’m not OP, but I’ve switched to Telegram a while back because I loved the silent message option. Scheduled are also awesome, and recently added quote part of reply is very neat.
This is all UX, the UI is sleek but nothing too extraordinary for me.
Telegram has some clumsiness in it’s UX too, which I find annoying (attaching a pic on Android, for example).
I’m usually pretty indifferent to UI so long as UX makes sense. But even I feel the difference between Signal and Telegram, so much so that I have friends on both and we use Telegram instead of Signal.
That to me is pretty telling - we know better, we promote Signal to other people, and would still rather use Telegram because of UI/UX.
While Signal looks like any generic SMS app. Heck, both NextSMS and Textra look as good/better and have more “features” (interface customization).
As a technical person who cares more about functionality that stuff doesn’t matter much to me, but it’s easy to see how a typical user would perceive them (and honestly, the difference is so great it even affects me).
Signal looks dated, like SMS, Telegram looks (and behaves) modern.
My understanding is that Telegram is partnered with a non profit crypto group, and that group is partnered with like 20 different companies that validate transactions, one of which is Tencent.
Granted I only read a couple articles on it in the last five minutes cause this was the first I heard of it, there could be more to the story I missed.
You need to explicate the hell out of this cuz I vehemently disagree and point out, in terms of user experience its dogshit for me (but also implicitly that Telegram is conveniently insecure by default and even if you “encrypt”, ifs a non-documented public slop version of messaging encryption [novel + security by obscurity]
Consequently, I would never be comfortable trusting it
What do you want expectorated, why IMO Telegram is less problematic than WhatsApp or why the UI is way better than Telegram or Signal? Cause they’re very different things.
As far as I know, it would still be needed at registration, just would give you an option to hide it and thus it would stop being your main identifier.
People acting like a phone number isn’t 100x more personally identifiable than email are delusional. I have like 700 unique emails atm, and can create a new one within seconds. I only have a few numbers.
Spammers don’t bother scanning domains as much nowadays. They used to watch domain registration then spam addresses like admin@, contact@, office@ etc. but nowadays most people aren’t dumb enough to use those anymore. So spammers would rather buy a list of millions of addresses that someone else obtained by breaking into sites like Yahoo or LinkedIn, which are much more likely to be valid addresses.
You can get bitten by catch all if someone who knows you and knows your domain and knows you have a catch all has it in for you and subscribes addresses at your domain to mailing lists and other spammy places. 😊
A catch-all is not a good idea. But Migadu lets you do something called pattern rewrites which are aliases that can contain wildcards. So you can set up a pattern like shop-*@yourdomain.tld and use addresses like shop-amazon@, shop-etsy@ etc.
It doesn’t have to be “shop” you can use anything you want and make up the pattern in any way you want (“ama.shop.zon@” or whatever you can think of).
It’s better than plus addresses (“realaddress+amazon@”) because it doesn’t have to include your real address, and you can make a pattern that nobody can guess, but still retain the ability to use one address per site so you know who’s spamming you, and you can make them up on the fly.
In fact I no longer use my “real” address for anything except logging into IMAP and SMTP, I use aliases or patterns for everything else.
Edit: If you want to also be able to send email from these addresses make sure to enable “wildcard sender” for the associated mailbox.
These addresses do have one downside similar to catch-all: if one of them starts getting spam you have to make an explicit deny rule for it. Some people contend that this is a messy approach and they’d rather make regular (non-wildcard) aliases and deny everything else. The downside with that however is that you can no longer make up addresses on the fly, you have to go to the Migadu admin to create the alias every time.
True, signing up for several accounts using the same personal domain will create a link between those accounts though (whereas if they’re all @simplelogin.com or similar then you’re hiding asking the crowd)
Maybe. However, as long as they don’t know my real name/identity I don’t really care. Fact is that is much easier for companies to just block known email alias services than unknown random domain. Some of them do this already. Neither method is perfect, obviously.
In my country we’re required to have our own identification tied to the number and we can only legally have a handful of number under a person name. Email is nothing lol.
I lived in a country doing that, and couldn’t understand the people making social media profiles with their (actually traceable to a real life identity) phone numbers public. Don’t you love receiving spam calls?
Funny thing is, there’s a time where the hot topic is basically facebook eavesdropping conversation then put on ads with item relevant to the conversation. Everyone talk about it being creepy, but everyone keep using it without any change. I think they just don’t care ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I have a very, very old SIM card. It’s from the 3G era, which means I miss out on my phone’s 5G capabilities. However, when I went to buy a new card I found out you’re required to take a selfie and send to the telecom company alongside your ID and email, which is creepy enough to keep me using my 3G SIM…
Maybe you can request a new card but under the same number? In my country we can request for a new card that way, though we didn’t need to take a selfie when buying a new number, just have to register your name and ID(quite old fashion but the rule is made in pre-smartphone era to combat scammer)
I’d have to go to a telecom store to do that in person, which I don’t really have an issue with, except that it may take a whole afternoon on a queue waiting for my turn.
Anyway, I rarely use mobile internet and when I do, it’s mostly for text messages, so I don’t feel a pressing need to upgrade.
I use Proton Mail, which lets you make ‘aliases’, which you can use for different sites. The alias forward staright to your main (or a nominated) email.
You can use simplelogin.io to do the same, and I’m sure there are similar services around.
E.g. I can’t have [email protected] as my WhatsApp email, and it would forward to whatever account I normally use.
I do this for pretty much everything on line, so they all have their own bespoke email for me.
Would you say Proton Mail’s aliases are better in some way than Firefox Relay? Do you have experience with both to give your impression of which you’d recommend over the other? Or perhaps anyone else would care to weigh in, feel free to do so. Thanks, friends!
You don’t need to do it through the email interface. You can do it through many password managers (API key). With simplelogin and a custom domain you can set it up to use regexes and control the flow of emails to any number of inboxes. It’s like a fine grained catch-all where you don’t need to create the emails ahead of time and can “send as” any of them… or disable any if they start receiving spam.
If I wanted to activate a new Facebook I could just type [email protected] into the signup field and verify it seconds later. If I wanted it to go to both me and my brother, I could add his custom string (e.g. [email protected]).
I’ve been doing this for 2 years and only recently received my first spam. All I had to do was change the email with the service and disable the old address. Easy peasy. You can also disable the catch-all at any time if someone starts fucking your life. Then all you have to do is create a dozen emails ahead of time and assign them as needed.
Sorry, yes you do. Because it’s so interlinked in my mind I got that wrong. But deffot the easiest way to do it I’ve found (as long as you’re using proton mail though, I guess…)
Any email service will let you make aliases. If it doesn’t, or if it price-gouges you for how many aliases you can make (which are basically zero cost for them) — find a better email service.
Also, there’s no need to use a 3rd-party alias service unless the address you’re protecting cannot be used on an email service, like if it’s a gmail address for example so you’re stuck with gmail. But even so you can buy a domain, forward your Gmail address to it, and start enjoying aliases and all kinds of cool features.
Cool. I’m fine with using a 3rd party tool though. As a Linux user I’m quite used to having separate tools that do a single job well. 😊 I’ve been using Firefox Relay so far with positive results. But the free version is quite limited and you can’t really customize the aliases at all.
But if Proton Mail already comes with aliasing, that would be a good alternative as I already have an address there. Just not a paying customer yet.
Trying to separate myself from Google a little bit as of late, so I’m looking for alternatives, but nothing too obscure and no self-hosting yet. I’d love a complete package like Google offers, kind of like Proton does.
What will be very hard for me to shake off is Google Drive and Google Documents (Sheets, Docs, etc). Very useful services that do their stuff well. Unfortunately. And very integrated into the only phones I enjoy using – Pixel phones. 😑
Proton doesn’t offer its own aliases, they use a third party service as well. It would basically be very similar to what you already get from Relay.
Have a look at Mailbox.org if you’re looking for integrated services, they offer packages with more than just email. It’s a long-running German service.
Please be wary of “encrypted” mail services, they make it fairly hard to migrate away from them later, if you need to. You need special tools to get your mail out of them, and those tools are at their whim.
Proton doesn’t offer its own aliases, they use a third party service as well. It would basically be very similar to what you already get from Relay.
Ah. By this, you mean they don’t offer aliases that are under their own domain? Seems like a good thing to me, honestly.
Have a look at Mailbox.org if you’re looking for integrated services, they offer packages with more than just email. It’s a long-running German service.
Thanks for the tip!
Please be wary of “encrypted” mail services, they make it fairly hard to migrate away from them later, if you need to. You need special tools to get your mail out of them, and those tools are at their whim.
My understanding is that mailbox.org is one of these services? But you still recommend them? 🙂
My understanding is that mailbox.org is one of these services? But you still recommend them?
They just offer normal email features (TLS connections, PGP support, 2FA for webmail).
An “encrypted” service encrypts the messages at rest (on their server storage) but that makes it incompatible with normal email protocols which means you have to use their protocols and their apps to access it. Proton offers an adapter that allows you to use normal protocols (IMAP/POP3/SMTP) but it’s only for PC, and if they ever discontinue that your email becomes captive.
Yes. With a service that uses standard IMAP/POP3 protocols you can always download your entire mailbox and upload it somewhere else. If it’s dependent of their apps and they don’t provide full download as a feature, you’re stuck.
Of course if you’re the type that doesn’t keep much email on the server it wouldn’t affect you that much but then the whole encryption thing makes even less sense.
Gonna be honest, I don’t use email in a way that I need my data locally. I always just use their respective web interfaces or apps. Maybe I should be worried, maybe I’m naive. 😅
But these are very good points of info, so appreciate your help here! Thank you, friend!
The problem is that they’re reaching for emails in addition to phone numbers. Don’t think for a second they’re going to let you login with just email. They want email just to have yet another data metric to profile you with.
And almost everyone in Central America and Mexico and 45% of Canadians and high 90% range for most of Africa. So like, everyone but the USA, China, Japan, and Russia.
Never met an it-pro using that thing. And beside some boomers and younger technically challenged, i have never seen one using it. To each his own. People actually use facebook too. Or even twi… Errr. X.
Yeah, that’s small little thing, that everyone uses it. I’ve been waiting to get away from WhatsApp for years, but I would be an idiot to say that I can get away from it and still communicate with my family and friends via text.
If everyone would think this way, all other messengers would be extinct and Zuckerberg would rule over everyones most personal data. And then, oh wonder, it suddenly has a subscription-cost too.
Not for me. If people are so stubborn to use it, they gotta go back to email or sms if they really wanna reach me. I don’t use that crap, nor facebook or twitter or instagram or tiktok or…
It is extremely widespread in Europe. In Germany, a good 50 million people (out of 80) use it every day. I would describe myself as very tech-savvy and privacy-conscious and would normally never use it , but since everyone in the family and friends use it without exception, there is no escape. plus quite a lot of business now use whatsapp for contact / support.
Same here (South America). You can not use it yourself but it will mostly keep you out of the loop on everything. Most of the phone companies don’t charge you whatsapp message data just to make it more inescapable.
How is that even a thing? are your data-plans that shitty that this bit of whatsapp-traffic matters? Unless you’re sending some hour-long movies every days.
Data plans exists, but there is no good middle ground. You have the unlimited 4g connection for 20 USD , or the WhatsApp only for a few dollars.
Most of the people, specially older age or people who already have unlimited data from work phones, do not need 4g unlimited connection, so why spend extra 15 USD (which is a lot in latin America), if you can still communicate perfectly fine via WhatsApp.
Depends on the country, in mine data plans are not that expensive (add some asterisks to that). But they include those “whatsapp free” or some streaming service traffic with no cost to get the edge over other phone companies. All of them mostly have the whatsapp free thing.
I used to live in a different country and it did make a significant difference, as @desconectado points out below.
You mean the WA-traffic made a significant difference? But how? It’s still mostly just text, no?
Here data is expensive, but a messenger wouldn’t make a difference (unless you’d exchange a lot of large files) so that any provider would gain a benefit over the competition. Including TV or netflix or tidal hifi, that’d would. Weird…
You mean the WA-traffic made a significant difference?
No, I don’t mean that. Whatsapp traffic (files i don’t think is included in the deal) is treated by the companies independently of other data traffic. You may not have a data plan, but still get a “whatsapp free” thingy, you can text for free via whatsapp without using data plans.
I’m german too, and I just deny using a tool just because “everyone else does it”. Those who use it and want to contact me, have bad luck or just use a decent messenger. This “there-is-no-escape”-mentality helps that shitty company to keep its grasp on people. I try to educate and offer alternatives. If it’s not accepted, then at least I tried.
Nah man, I value way more the contact with my mum and close friends than refusing to use an stupid app.
If my mum is in trouble and try to message me via WhatsApp: “sorry mum, I don’t answer WhatsApp messages, good luck next time trying to get someone to help you”. Nah man, that’s so shitty.
Yeah, they do, that’s what living in a society is, not everyone does as you want, and you have to compromise.I have my own choices (in other aspects) which they probably have to live with. But I’m not going to ghost my mum (and close family) just because she uses WhatsApp, that’s plain entitlement and immaturity.
I can’t contact my mum via msm (not the same country), and are you seriously suggesting email over chat messages? They serve two different purposes.
Sorry, but it’s not ghosting to me if they’re ignorantly refusing to use anything else than this piece of crap software despite any explanation and help to install another one. Unless they’re technically that challenged, that they would need years to understand it. I would accept nearly ANY other messenger, which i would install too. Once had viber installed just because one friend was slovakian and it’s their thing there. But not WA. To me it’s integrity, i couldn’t look in the mirror if I’d be installing what i despise. Like a vegan eating meat not to offend someone.
I know, most people don’t care about those things at all. But I do. And i hate, that the worst companies always win the races. I can’t hate AND support it at the same time.
Of course email serves a different purpose. But that’s beside sms the only alternative that’s most likely already installed/available. I get a message on my messenger whenever i receive an email on any account, so i least it would be little lag for me.