
Wire – modern, private messaging from Skype co-founder - thomanq
https://wire.com
======
giancarlostoro
Previous discussion from over a year ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8692563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8692563)

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ConAntonakos
Yeah, Wire has been out for a while.

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andrey_utkin
Enough of fenced services owning the users. I'm fed up with carouselle of new
services for same features. I'm going to stick with XMPP, which is openly
federated and free as in freedom. It is now technically capable of chat sync,
sent messages editing, end to end encryption (there are alternative modes to
fit different usecases), videocalls, and many more things. There are working
gateways to many other networks, including Skype (not fully, but mostly enough
to start transition away from skype).

~~~
Veratyr
XMPP could be a fantastic option but it's missing push notifications, which
are an absolute killer these days. You either don't use XMPP on mobile or take
a massive hit to your battery.

ChatSecure has a nice writeup about this: [https://chatsecure.org/blog/fixing-
the-xmpp-push-problem/](https://chatsecure.org/blog/fixing-the-xmpp-push-
problem/)

~~~
edhelas
Conversations have Push Notification support
[https://github.com/siacs/Conversations/issues/1171](https://github.com/siacs/Conversations/issues/1171).
There is a standard and it's implemented in some XMPP servers as well.

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ycmbntrthrwaway
Well, some source code is on
[https://github.com/wireapp](https://github.com/wireapp)

But it seems that only some crypto libraries are opensourced, no frontend and
things like that.

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tyfon
I just tested the video call with my parents that still have an old adsl link
to their home, it was crystal clear. Both skype and hangouts struggle when
doing the same. Hangouts actually makes the audio choppy.

I'm a bit worried about using something that is free and has no ads while
maintaining central servers though..

~~~
degenerate
I just gave it a shot too, and it works well. I deleted my account though,
because I only need voice chat with my team and Discord has this app beat
hands down for collaboration and team rooms.

~~~
tmikaeld
Discord isn't encrypted (Only client-to-server) and it's not open source at
all.

It's too bad though - as you say - it is very nice for collaboration and teams
(It's geared exclusively towards gamers).

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tmikaeld
They just added encrypted voice and video calls (1to1) in the latest version
(Guess that's why this is posted now).

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Siimteller
So far only calls were E2EE. Video was added this Thursday and full E2EE
switched on for all comms.

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andreyf
> all your data is protected by European privacy laws.

Interesting to note that "American" is implicitly synonymous with "insecure".

~~~
Veratyr
There are two things I'll note:

\- As a non-American, I see America as one of the least safe places to store
my information. The Snowden leaks showed that the US government has zero
respect for the privacy of non-Citizens.

\- As someone who's lived both inside and outside America, I've noticed that
privacy laws in the US are weak relative to other countries (much of Europe,
Australia) that I've been in. Europeans have things like Right to be
Forgotten. Americans have companies that have refused to remove my personal
information after I terminated my account with them.

~~~
technion
As an Australian, I would argue the metadata retention laws leave us just as
weak as the US - if not, worse. I'd be surprised if the US equivalent of
Greyhound Racing Australia had legally mandated, warrantless access to every
ISP's metadata.

~~~
Veratyr
The laws you're likely talking about aren't as bad as you might think. They
made a number of changes before it passed that make it more reasonable:
[http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w...](http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22legislation/bills/r5375_aspassed/0000%22)

It doesn't affect:

\- "contents or substance of a communication"

\- "information that states an address to which a communication was sent on
the internet, from a telecommunications device, using an internet access
service provided by the service provider and was obtained by the service
provider only as a result of providing the service"

When they first introduced that bill it was rather scary looking but by the
time it passed it's not too bad.

~~~
technion
Well I did say "metadata", rather than "traffic content". There are always
different way to look at it, but the absurd ease with which groups that are
not law enforcement have access to such data is the issue to me.

~~~
Veratyr
Internet metadata is specifically excluded from retention though:

"information that states an address to which a communication was sent on the
internet"

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gtf21
Does anyone know of an independent audit/confirmation of the robustness of
their privacy / security? I don't really know enough about crypto or security
to be able to tell.

~~~
giancarlostoro
I'm wondering the same, it is a shame there's not a whole lot of end to end
encrypted applications, it's a conspiracy all of it's own or something? Maybe
cryptologists are sparse or this is just not in their available time for the
type of problems to tackle, not sure. The need is clearly there for more open
source secure applications, hopefully we see more.

~~~
thepangolino
My theory, as way out there as it might seem, is that there is hardly any
interest for actual encryption. GPG's unique maintain was struggling to make
ends meet until last year when he made it in the news.

I have yet to find someone, even among the "privacy aware" people to chat on
Facebook using Pidgin's OTR plugin.

~~~
reidflix
>I have yet to find someone, even among the "privacy aware" people to chat on
Facebook using Pidgin's OTR plugin.

That's because the "privacy aware" folks don't use Facebook. And if they did
(likely a damn good reason) they would. Makes it all the less likely for you
to have met them

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mickael
XMPP strong selling point is federation. You can run your own private server
and it does encryption. There is plenty of implementations from servers to
clients, most being open source. It seems to me just one of the Zillion
messaging alternative available.

~~~
reustle
Why hasn't there been a beautiful XMPP apps created? A company could come in
and provide effortless XMPP server setup for a monthly price, and provide
great apps for all to use, no?

~~~
edhelas
There is. You can have a look at Conversations for Android
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conve...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations)
and I'm also working on Movim [https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/) ;)

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pmontra
The app is free. What do they make money from, do they have ads?

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ycmbntrthrwaway
They say "No advertising" on the front page.

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pmontra
So, philanthropy?

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reidflix
Currently VC backed (Iconical, Skype co-founder Janus Friis), premium services
in the future.

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balupton
So will be dead in a year or two when they run out of cash or sell.

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r3bl
I really don't get this. What's their advantage over using this over... well,
anything else?

They seem like a complete copy of Signal to me: they're a centralized service
with open source clients that promises end-to-end encrypted communication. I
see no difference between them. It's like re-inventing the wheel. Honestly, I
don't see a single reason why I should use this.

~~~
kitsunesoba
The problem with Signal (at least for me) is that its desktop client relies on
your phone's Signal app, which feels weird and "duct tape-ish". I've been
spoiled by the ease of using iMessage with multiple devices (phone, tablet,
desktop, or otherwise): just sign in and it works, no janky-feeling
interdevice communication necessary, and I've come to expect that from any
messaging service I use.

Signal is great for those who confine their instant-message-like communication
to their phones, since desktops being treated as second class citizens isn't
an issue for them. I am not one of those individuals. I want to be able to
read and reply to messages on whichever device I'm using at the moment without
having to think about my phone's presence at all.

~~~
cyphar
Well, when you consider that the keys are ethereal, it makes it clear why it's
"duct tape-ish". You could argue they should have a syncing protocol but now
you need to come up with a secure syncing protocol.

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danpalmer
Wire launched at least a year ago, if not earlier, and I have the same
question now that I had then: Why should I use it?

For good security, I have email/PGP which has few of my friends, but lots of
usage for secure communication.

For secure chat I have Signal which some of my friends use, but not many.

For most of my chat I have WhatsApp which is relatively secure, and has a
relatively good UI. Almost all my friends and family have this.

For the rest of my chat I have Facebook Messenger which isn't secure in the
slightest, but it also has almost all of my friends and family on it. It has a
very good UI, and lots of features that I make good use of.

Wire on the other hand has almost none of my friends, isn't open, so can't be
any more secure than WhatsApp, and has a pretty but ultimately annoying UI,
and very few features.

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ukblewis
Hi Dan,

I'm not using Wire yet - so I'm just quoting their marketing material - but
they directly address your comments: "Wire uses open-source cryptography to
encrypt all content. We made the source code for data handling available to
the public under the GPL License. This means that anybody can review the
source code." "Only Wire offers fully encrypted calls, video and group chats
available on all your devices, on any modern platform. Unlike niche security
apps we do not sacrifice usability for security — Wire is simple and
straightforward to use."

~~~
swiley
It sounds like the app itself is closed though. Skype probably used openssl
(open source crypto) on Linux but that didn't make it secure.

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dingdingdang
I think this looks good - whether long term use is sustainable is dependent on
whether they open up their protocol to interoperability via some sort of
consortium. Email rules, not because of its brilliance, but because of its
level of standardisation and ubiquity. The trick will be to provide a
transparent P2P solution that can somehow be boosted by leaving nodes online..
now provide pay for service that can run the nodes for people - business plan
(tm).

On second thought this kind of thing is already done around the torrent sub-
culture with regards to seed boxes..

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zaro
Yet another WhatsApp, Messenger, Viber, Line, WeChat, Skype ,<Insert your own
closed protocol, walled garden, messaging app here>.

So innovation, much technology ...

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shmerl
All modern platforms? I don't see the Linux version.

Plus, for any such application to have trust these days, it should be open
source both for clients and servers. Enough of this walled garden closed
instant messaging.

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mchahn
> I don't see the Linux version.

It runs in the browser so technically it runs on Linux.

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andreyf
Safari unsupported for web version:

> Download the latest version of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera or MS
> Edge to use Wire for Web.

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Siimteller
Safari lacks WebRTC support in a manner that would play nice with Wire
features. Thus no support for now.

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hofmannsthal
A new messaging app each week.

