Anyways so I want to also say since I am here and was talking about metadata not being encrypted:

[elizafox@social.treehouse.systems]

Anyways so I want to also say since I am here and was talking about metadata not being encrypted:

Any "E2EE" system that does *not* encrypt metadata is WORTHLESS.

If anyone who has access to the central system can see you are in "government dissident chat" for example, *your system has failed at privacy.*

It is somewhat okay if you know they're in "group id 694201337" as long as you can glean *no other details* as a server operator... because there's not easy ways around this problem, to be blunt. But the server operator should *not* know you are in, say, "government dissident chat."

Server operators should also have *no real clue* who is on your contact list. Ideally, they shouldn't know who you're messaging at all... but that one is also a difficult problem.

Just because the contents of the messages are encrypted, *does not mean that the group is private.*

Metadata *must* be encrypted.

The only thing the server should know about you:

* How to map something user-friendly to your user ID
* Other people's user IDs
* Maybe group IDs for the purposes of rendezvous

And the only thing a server should ideally do:

* Be a dumb relay
* Handle mailboxing of encrypted payloads (if your payload is too sensitive to survive being stored, your encryption is broken, try again)

The only thing that remotely comes close to doing any of this, is Signal. They actually have tried very hard to make a fully anonymous chat protocol and have done a damn good job.

If ANY other chat protocol is to exist, it must provide the guarantees Signal does, at the bare minimum. That is the *floor.* Anything that does not exceed the floor should be summarily discarded.

[elizafox@social.treehouse.systems]

I have personally tried to solve this problem and have come to the conclusion Signal did it best, Signal did it right, and the main cardinal sin of Signal besides being centralised is that it requires a phone number. Pretty mid.

I still say Signal is the go to protocol to use if you want absolute anonymity. Get a throwaway number. Just fucking do it. For the love of God, do not use XMPP. Do not use Matrix if you can help it. Those do not exceed the floor, in XMPP's case, not even close.