I currently use Telegram for my friends and family, but have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the UK Government is either reaching agreement for backdoors with messaging services, or is trying its hardest to.
I’m also on Element/Matrix. Before I try to get my contacts to join me on there, should I be aware of any privacy issues or is that a good place to head?
To be clear, I have a phone number, but I do not WANT to have one. Most aspects of my life I have removed my phone number from. There are still a few services ( like signal! ) which requires one, and I cope. Cellular data is also something worth avoiding, from a privacy perspective. It is very possible to live a life where you’re never very far from wifi, especially in a city. I do not currently do this, but would love to one day.
How is public wifi more secure than mobile internet?
For both, you need minimum a VPN connection outha there (to your home ideally, where you are in control of filters etc.) to get some privacy.
Mobile data you pay a service provider for and link all of your information to ( address, name, etc ), and can be used by one company to track your location at any time with very high accuracy as long as you are near 3 cell towers. Public wifi gets no information about you other than your MAC address and that you’re currently within it’s range. There is no central body that can track all your movements. You could, theoretically, buy prepaid data plans to minimize the info they know about you, but then you have to buy a new one each month, and there’s STILL one company tracking all your movements each month, though they don’t really know who YOU are. They could still do traffic analysis to figure that out.
It’s not that it’s less secure, it’s that it’s worse for privacy.
Also, messaging over SMS / MMS is awful for security, which I lump in with the rest of this conversation. https://youtu.be/wVyu7NB7W6Y