Aigars Dzerviniks

Nostr·Twitter·GitHub

The easiest way for most people to reach me will probably be on either Nostr or Twitter, but for more serious conversations I have a few other options.

I believe any online conversation, whether for fun or professional purposes, must be carried out in a secure and private environment; therefore, I would appreciate it if you respected that when reaching out to me.

I use ProtonMail, and privacy for ProtonMail users is already taken care of, but if you prefer a different email provided, you can use my PGP key to improve the privacy of our correspondence. It's not a strict requirement, but it will be greatly appreciated.

aigarsdz_public@pm.me

Session

Session is my favorite messenger. It has the simplicity and ease of use of Signal, but a better underlying architecture (read more about that further down the page!). It doesn't require you to provide any contact information; it uses a decentralized network, and you can set up your account from both mobile and desktop apps.

You might have heard about their recent financial struggles, but they seem to be resolved (at least for now), and the current development towards the second version of their protocol and a sustainable business model is going smoothly.

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SimpleX

SimpleX is what most people in the privacy community recommend these days, and it has a good amount of investment behind it. It goes one step further than Session by not having any identifier at all. The URL it provides is not an ID; it's just a way to connect two users. You can also use one-time URLs.

It's all very cool, but I find SimpleX to be significantly more complex than other messengers. The settings section will definitely overwhelm even tech-savvy users, and there is no way to sync contacts. You need to export and import them manually every time you migrate from one device to another, which means that if you lose the device or it gets damaged, you have to start from a clean page.

Also, linking your mobile account to a desktop app is a painful experience.

https://smp18.simplex.im/a#Iry8n1heDu4CXJWQWoxaY3auNLzGDPijGUsjrUhBiN4

Keet

Even privacy enthusiasts might not have heard of Keet. It's an elusive beast shrouded in mystery. You won't find it on Privacy Guides or similar resources, but there is a Techlore interview with the CEO of Holepunch—the company behind Keet. He explains the technology behind their software, and it sounds outstanding.

One thing to note is that while the underlying technology is open source, the client apps are not. That will be an instant turn-off for many people, and rightfully so, but I'm not too concerned about it in this specific case. I've also heard that they intend to fully open-source it at some point.

The look and feel of the app is even better than Session, so I want to get as many eyes on it as possible, especially from the security researchers.

Why not Signal? It has usernames now.

Signal is the golden standard for secure and private communications, and I'm nowhere near qualified enough to argue otherwise. It's a great messenger, but sadly it has two big flaws.

The first one is its reliance on phone numbers. It might have been fine 20 years ago when everyone was using a prepaid SIM card obtained with cash, but nowadays many countries don't even allow prepaid SIM cards. VoIP is not available everywhere either, so you are basically tying your Signal account to your identity. Yes, it's more of an anonymity thing than a privacy one, but it's still a big drawback for a privacy-focused messenger.

Signal does have usernames now, but you can't set up an account with only a username. You still need to tie it to a phone number. It also means you can't set up an account from a computer. It's a mobile-only messenger.

The second problem is the centralized nature of Signal. Centralized services are great for usability, but they are very vulnerable against government interference. Signal is a US company. It might be able to resist Europe's twisted laws, but once the US government comes after them, the game is over.