I used Signal for years and loved it, but I need SMS support to talk to, well, anyone I know. Is there a secure choice that’s near-equal?
Matrix is encrypted and decentralised, and has bridges for SMS: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/bridges/sms/
Your preinstalled SMS app is usually the best way to receive SMS, I wouldn’t give and unnecessary app permissions to access them!
But it’s not E2E encrypted
That’s because SMS isn’t end to end encrypted in general, you need a encryption client on both sides to achive E2E encryprion aka Singal to Signal or something comparable.
I mean I assume that’s what people mean by SMS app?
If both of you have the client, it would send it E2E, otherwise send it as regular SMS (kinda like imessage but paying more mind to security and privacy).
The SMS reliance existed before the name changed to Signal and it was a online messanger ever since so no clue what you mean with that.
Going back to my original comment, I was disagreeing with your recommendation of using the default sms application on your phone, as it is not E2EE. I would want an app that does E2EE with as many contacts as I can (meaning, all contacts that have the same E2EE client on the other side), and only default to regular SMS otherwise.
My recommendation isn’t to ditch Signal for contacts that have it to, it’s simply to avoid adding another app with access to your SMS if you are worried about security, there is nothing that app will do better than your default SMS app.
I’ve never heard of anything that offers secure messaging like Signal, and insecure SMS.
But there are lots of SMS apps that can be used along with Signal. No need for them to be the same app.
It was really convenient when you could just use one app.
That’s my current setup, but Signal gets no use because I can’t convince anyone to switch
When they dropped SMS support I went to qksms and SimpleX chat. I don’t even have Signal anymore.
Sure was nice to have only one app.
I don’t know about secure, when SMS itself isn’t by default, but aside from that I’ve personally been using QKSMS for a few months, after moving away from Google Messages and I found no issues, it’s solid and quite featureful.
I know it’s not a Signal fork with SMS support, which I’m sure still exists, but I wouldn’t use it because it would have to keep up with upstream and maintain the SMS feature too, so it most likely will fall a bit behind, which isn’t the best thing to let happen on an actual secure communication app
I think it’s a bad idea to mix the two tbh.
I love Signal, but just a PSA, if you convert between Android and iOS, you’re SOL on migrating your existing messages. You can migrate Android to Android or iOS to iOS, but not between the two platforms. There are at least applications that will let you migrate SMS between the two.
I mean, losing message history is kinda a known drawback of e2ee. not that big of a deal
