Crossposted using Lemmit.

Original post from /r/opsec by /u/phoenixlegend7 on 2023-06-29 19:13:24+00:00.

Hello,

I have a friend in a foreign country. We’d like to talk on the phone without worrying about his government listening in. Our conversations are fairly innocuous but my friend still worries. We use Signal, but worried the government might shut down Signal soon or if Signal goes down, we want to be have a backup method to communicate with the same level of security, quality and latency or second best after Signal. I don’t think Whatsapp, Telegram, Viber, Skype are good alternatives as they all store the call on their servers although they do encrypt end to end?

Let’s say I have case number one of having 2 machines connecting to each over the internet using Signal app which is using a direct connection between them encrypted end to end and using high quality low latency call.

Now I’m trying to see if setting up a case number two is comparable/similar: Where on one end, I have a SonoBus 1 client and 1 Sonobus server machines connected on the same local network and then Sonobus client number 2 from an external network connecting to the Sonobus server mentioned above over the internet.

Let’s say the two clients talk between them, is the call considered encrypted over the internet or not? Because I saw this mentioned on the SonoBus app description:

“SonoBus does NOT currently use any encryption for the data communication, so while it is very unlikely that it will be intercepted, please keep that in mind. All audio is sent directly between users peer-to-peer, the connection server is only used so that the users in a group can find each other.”

So the question if the call is being passed over the internet not encrypted unlike Signal? If let’s say the Sonobus server doesn’t actually open any router/firewall port, and I install a mesh vpn such as Tailscale on all 3 endpoints and they are all connected to it, will the call between the two sonobus clients be considered encrypted then? Also, what can I expect in terms of call quality and latency? Is it a direct connection that only depends on the internet speed of the two sides or is there more to it? (p2p, third party servers)

TLDR: Do you have any other Signal like alternatives? I’m basically looking for backup alternatives for Signal, what would be the next best thing? I guess Sonobus might be an overkill if used in conjunction with tailscale, I guess really what I need is a modern gamer voice software that’s encrypted end to end, comes with a server program and also comes with client apps for windows desktop, android and ios.

i have read the rules

Thank you.