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Which is more secure, Signal, Threema, or Teleguard? (lemdro.id)

submitted 1 month ago by Larryx@lemdro.id to c/PrivacyGuides@europe.pub

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I've been using Signal and Teleguard, but not Threema because it's a paid app. Which one is the most secure?

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[–] Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The moment the author used the birthday paradox in a wrong way to try and prove some point with the ID's, I stopped reading.

The points before that:

Being forced to use a unique mobile phone number is a major issue for many (me included). As is being based in the US.

Threema didn't yet have Perfect Forward Secrecy back in 2021, when this article was published, but it has now.

Yes, Threema isn't perfect. But neither is Signal.
Choosing which one you should prefer is up to your specific scenario.
Use a recent and trustworthy comparison chart, like e.g. the one by Kuketz.

[–] paris@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How is the birthday paradox being used incorrectly?

With 365 unique possible IDs, only 23 are needed to break the 50% chance threshold of new IDs colliding with an existing one. With 2.8 trillion unique possible IDs, only 1.7 million are needed to break the 50% chance threshold of new IDs colliding with an existing one.

It seems like an apples to apples comparison to me. Is it not?

[–] Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yes, for any single one out of these 1.7 million to collide with one other the probability might be 0.5 (didn't check it).
But he uses it in the sense that it is true for each of them, which it isn't.

To stay with the birthday example:
If I enter a room with 22 of the unique people already in there, the chance that one of them has the same birthday as me is 22/365=0.06 and not 0.5.