One thing I hope we can all learn from the revelations of these "private" texts:
SMS should never be considered private or secure communication. Whether by eavesdropping / MITM attack or by court order, everything you send via SMS can be revealed to the entire world, one way or another.
@voltronic yeah s list can be handy
deffo interested :)
I am still using IRC with OTR, on a secure server, in the control of his command, to contact my friend in Ukraine.
Also they use matrix.
@corlin
Matrix was one I was going to recommend. I've used Element, which is oriented at group / team chats and runs on matrix.
Some of us here have had an old-school XMPP group with OMEMO encryption for 4+ years. Still works great, and decentralized.
The third one I like is Briar. Also decentralized.
The one I really liked but quickly abandoned was Session. It sounds great until you read into it and find out it's running on their own crypto coins which you need to buy to run a node.
@voltronic not really for "group" chats although it can be, but I use Signal Messenger as a replacement for Whatsapp.
@hanse
Signal is definitely way better than using SMS, but only if the people you're talking to are also using it. Otherwise, you're talking to them with unencrypted SMS.
I still don't like the phone number requirement.
@voltronic Yeah I don't use it as an SMS service at all. Only Signal to Signal app messaging. And yes the phone number requirement is a PITA.
If anyone wants some recommendations on encrypted messaging services, I've tried a pile of them and can recommend a few.