If you know what I’m talking about, this post probably isn’t for you, though feel free to read it through just in case I said something entirely wrong. This isn’t meant to be long, it’s just something that I expect to post in a number of places under a content warning.

I don’t know the current situation beyond the key political takeaway, or why exactly I need to be afraid, though I have an idea of why in general. All I know is that I have been afraid for a while, for many more reasons. I stay active on platforms like Discord because I have friends there that I don’t want to lose, but it seems now more than ever that it is easy to lose them to circumstances well in our control.

As it stands, I am not a frequent Signal user, as I do not have friends who use it. I’d like to encourage that to change. Signal is about as tight cryptographically as one can get in an instant messenger to the point where it can only report Unix timestamps. It is used by whistleblowers and others that need to maintain privacy and potentially anonymity, but it is also used by those who simply want to stay secure while talking to those who are close to them. Using it more frequently in your day-to-day life will make you harder to track, which means that when private, secure communication becomes important, it will be much harder to discern its purpose.

I have friends on XMPP who speak with me using OMEMO. OMEMO encryption is based on the technology Signal uses, but its implementation is flawed on many of its most popular clients. While it has lasted me and my friends a while and does not require your phone number, it is slow to federate and trading OMEMO keys is an action with really high overhead that has made it difficult to get new people on the network. I don’t know who will move with me, but if people are willing to move, I want to as well.

If you know me and see this, I am happy to help with setting this up if you need it. There’s also a good post by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on how to set it up and use it. Signal is mobile oriented and requires your phone number, but you do not need to distribute it to get the app to work. If there’s any important tips I learn while helping others, I’ll update this post as I go along with what I find.