Hello Everyone,
This is something I’ve been thinking about in the wake of many users joining Signal, due to WhatsApp’s new privacy policy changes.
When it comes to the mobile client (in case of Android), we could verify its integrity by checking the source code & the APK’s integrity using reproducible builds (https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/).
When it comes to the server, it is possible that it could get compromised in many ways.
My question is, when it comes to privacy & security, does the server integrity matter if we are reasonably sure the client isn’t compromised in any way or doesn’t transmit anything that the server could access in a meaningful way.
And, this could apply to any service that has both FOSS client & server or just FOSS client.
Almost anyone can be socially engineered to accept a compromised app update, but that is anyways a moot point.
Why would you use a service that connects your device to a US based and likely compromised server, if there are alternatives that can be hosted locally? It doesn’t really matter if the service only sends minimal and encrypted data, because in the age of big data that is plenty to use for ML based correlation. No data shared is always better :)
I totally get that. But, it’s an uphill battle to make people you know well, to switch to a centralized alternative, let alone a decentralized/p2p/self hosted one.