I understand that it may be problematic sometimes but this was very smooth. I didn’t even say anything.
A: what’s your number for the whatsapp group Me: I don’t have whatsapp because of facebook. B: ok, we have to use signal then A: ok
And that was it. Life can be very easy sometimes
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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Probably they were on the edge already, but it’s good that they have made the switch
What’s wrong with Signal: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/why_not_signal.md
TLDR: Funded by the CIA, centralized in the US and phone numbers make you personally identifiable.
Isn’t that the guy who invented Lemmy? Reminds me of TG’s founder doing the same.
I’m assuming OP didn’t just accept a position with the fucking Hezbollah, so Signal probably fits his usecase
It’ll be fine. If the fucking CIA wanted OP to spill the beans they’ll just send an agent with a wrench directly to OP’s kneecaps.
Yeah if you have nothing to hide, what is the problem with spying?!
For a second I thought you meant you don’t use Signal, so they all went there on purpose to avoid you.
People dont install Signal for me, especially feo groups. They use arguments like “yeah, and I also might have reasons not to use Signal like I do with Whatsapp”
Kinda disrespectful to put a line against a data selling app and comparing it to “nah, I just dont wanna”
To be fair that does take effort
Heck yeah! I got a small work group to use Element instead of slack or discord once. I was so proud of them. Kudos for you.
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I convinced my family by telling them I won’t use anything else. Use Signal or don’t talk to me. Win win
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“oh, noooooooo. Anyway.”
This headline sounds a lot funnier if you assume “it” means Signal, like I did.
Fuck this one guy in particular.
Wow, congrats.
my workplace only IRC and xmpp for work related chat
That sounds pretty based
Do you have a vacancy?
I have a feeling B wanted to use Signal, but expected it to be difficult to make others shift. When OP gave the opportunity, B came in and swyped it right away,
Exactly my thought as well
@GravitySpoiled I love this, I had a very similar situation with my sports group, litte questions asked as well! Best thing was the reaction from the leader “I you are kind of right anyways, we should get rid of WhatsApp.”
Problems only appeared later down the line with people complaining that they don’t get notifications and it’s not a habit for them to check it, so they don’t see new messages.
Why don’t you use WhatsApp?
Because it’s proprietary garbage. If there are FOSS alternatives, I’m most definitely going to use them instead of proprietary software, let alone proprietary software by companies like Meta. And since there are plenty of those alternatives: No WhatsApp for me.
Meta owns it, and meta is one of the large, evil tech corps.
They are probably the easiest one for most people from English-speaking countries to cut from their lives.
https://www.avoidthehack.com/stop-using-whatsapp
I work in cyber security and this is dogshit.
Most of it debunked thanks to the EU also.
Well, WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. They are a large player, so they are under a bunch of scrutiny.
But at the end of the day, WhatsApp clearly states it takes all this information. They only claim to keep your messages end-to-end encrypted.
I wonder if this applies to text messages only, or to things like voice memos, images/videos, gifs, etc. as well.
WhatsApp doesn’t let you send documents if you don’t give it full access to your files. Sure, maybe they pinky-promise don’t do anything but this is Facebook we’re talking about.
The same caveat goes for photos and videos - you can’t even send a photo if you don’t give it the camera permission and gallery access, something it clearly doesn’t need just to send a single picture.
Additionally, WhatsApp loads previews of websites. Sure, on the privacy violations list that’s pretty low-priority but I’d still like to not have a link contacted before I can take my 3 seconds to look at it and decide wether it’s worth clicking. Especially since a lot of my contacts send obvious scams (“send this message to 10 contacts for a chance to win a free iPhone” type bullshit mostly).
Revoking WhatsApp’s contacts permission will not show peoples’ nicknames - it will only ahow numbers. Yet you have to give yourself a nickname on WhatsApp, so they clearly have some interest in your contacts. Otherwise they wouldn’t block it outright when it’s an already implemented feature to show nicknames for numbers not in the contact list.
All quite suspicious if you ask me. Although I don’t work in cyber security so it’s clearly just incoherent rambing from me.
You must be lost
Nope just well informed and educated, not a shrieking pearl clutcher “cUz fAsEbuK”
Lol
For people wondering how to do this in your own lives, have two phones. Have a phone that you install work stuff on, including proprietary apps like WhatsApp. Just tell the people around you hey you can contact me on WhatsApp, but I only see it when I’m at my desk during business hours. I do use more privacy focused platforms on my personal device that you can reach me anytime, such a signal or simple x or matrix. And you’ll find a lot of people are very flexible as long as you give them some reason, and you’re not being unreasonable yourself.
Good recommendation!
There is an app on f-droid called “shelter” that gives you access to Android Work Profiles. This is a sandboxed area of your phone that makes it function like a second phone. You can install apps that are only accessible from within that sandbox. You can install a second, sandboxed copy of an app. You can shut down all your sandboxed apps simultaneously.
I have a bunch of bullshit, garbage apps I very rarely use installed in my sandboxed “work” profile (Facebook, restaurant apps, and some other assorted trash apps) so they won’t harass me at random.
Shelter is great, and work profiles are an amazing tool to have.
My intention with having two phones, one always at your desk for work items, is to set coworkers expectations that your not available on corporate systems 24/7. If they want to reach you outside of business hours, they will need to use better platforms. This demonstrates your being reasonable and using Whatsapp (or whatever) to be on the main platforms, but you have a real motivation to use the better platforms (like signal, etc)
Having two phones absolutely sucks. Didn’t work for me at all.
Have you tried embracing the dope boy chic?
It’s only a minor hassle, lots of people manage it easily
Lots of people do lots of things.
I disagree. I absolutely love the fact that I can just turn it off after office hours and throw it in a corner during holidays and weekends. Sure, it’s a bit cumbersome to take two phones with you, but it’s also cumbersome to take the laptop and everything with you all the time. Just put it in the same bag and you’re good. Good to note, my employer provides me with a phone, so I didn’t need to buy a second one. It also means that if I switch jobs, I just return the phone and still have my personal device.
But if it doesn’t work for you, by all means, don’t do it. For me the good outweighs the bad.
I have a second sim card for my phone. I just turn off that sim when I’m not working, and set my status as away for group chat.
In this context, there isn’t any tangible benefit to having a second phone.
Why would a workplace need a group chat? Aren’t there any enterprise tools in place to achieve that?
Cannot access work intranet (Teams etc.) from personal phones. Don’t have work phones. They all use WhatsApp so reluctantly, so do I.
In these companies, does anyone check the licenses in details to make sure using them is ok for the company?
Meta will get at least the metadata: meaning they will record who was in which call connecting from where.
For example, if one member is visiting a client, Meta may be able to infer the relation between the 2 companies.
If any of the people in the room click “report”, then the discussion is sent for review without the encryption protection
I’m pretty sure their user agreement translates to “you agree to let us do whatever the f*ck we want with the data you’re purposely disclosing to us”.
And last but not least: if Meta decides to wipe the archives, any info get lost?
There a reasons large companies ban unauthorized apps to talk about work.
Like I said, it’s for us to talk about shifts and what have you.
I would never join a group chat like that. If they need to get ahold if me after hours, they can call me.
BTW Teams doesn’t live on Intranet. There’s no reason they wouldn’t be able to open up Teams to BYOD beyond incompetence.
I know Teams doesn’t live on the intranet, but I’m not going to put work software on my own phone. Policy needs it to set up a work profile and I then can’t use fingerprint, face or a 4 digit pin. And all the shite that flows through Teams would be be piling up, just like it does on the PC at work, brilliant when you’re only in a couple of days a week. They want me to use a phone? Provide one.
The WhatsApp group is for us to send updates about traffic, if someone can cover a shift etc. it’s not an official work thing. I could of course not use it and just text people. That’s really just making my life difficult whilst sat up here on my high horse with a self righteous look on my face, whilst I miss the chance of an extra shift.
Denying putting work stuff on your phone is absolutely valid. The company should provide a company device in that case. And if you do agree to put company data on your phone, they should give a monthly stipend towards your phone bill. That’s how every org I’ve worked at has approached it.
Really depends a lot on the groupchat. I was apprehensive but it’s quiet there and overall the things that get sent there are either in office hours (e.g. “internet might be out intermittently we are working on a fix”) to links to pay for something someone paid for outside of work like food or drinks.
I don’t mind it that way, maybe once a week a couple messages
That requires a business login on your personal device, which is typically against company policy.
Although, so should be sharing work info outside of corporate channels, so what do I know.
Small companies and startups like to save money
I used to work for a small PPI claims management company. Our accounts team had a WhatsApp group for social discussion outside of work.
All of our internal work comms were handled through Slack.
Emergency team chat when there is a outage of corporate systems
Chat for social work stuff like team building or off-site gatherings.
Being about to shit talk about corporate stuff off the reservation is nice.
It can be a big sms group chat, signal, discord, whatever your team likes.
…to which for privacy reasons your team shouldn’t like SMS, Discord, Telegram, Slack, and probably even Signal (somewhat for privacy, & more for accessibility)
What do you recommend?
XMPP. A business can self-host, there are public servers, or there are many businesses which offer customised xmpp hosting as a service.
I can be federated with other xmpp servers or be a locked-down work-only service, or federate with chosen other servers (such as a client company’s xmpp servers).
The main problem is, you need to have someone good enough to setup a proper firewall when selfhosting.
Sure, it might not take $$$$, but it will take $, which is definitely more than nothing.
Snikket exists for this type of user. If money is an issue, since XMPP is actually lightweight unlike Matrix, you can host multiple things even on the cheapest VPSs so it isn’t dedicated to one taskl or self-host out of your home (which is what I do, but also with some small sites, a feed aggregator, Mumble, terminal sharing, Darcs/Pijul version control systems, & Nix remote builder).
Skill issue, not money issue.
But when you are a business, everything can be converted into a money issue.
If that’s the main problem then that’s easy to solve! Simply use a free public xmpp server.
I mention the self- and paid-hosting options because businesses tend to like having a sevice agreement backed by a contract, and may have additional specialised requirements not provided by free services (xmpp or otherwise).