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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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Privacy
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People should share Signal usernames or matrix channels or something at these protests to organize.
Is Signal on iOS or a Googled version of Android that much better? Couldn't Apple and Google technically snoop on those texts anyways?
Just leave your phone at home
I think there are some attempts by google and apple by doing client side scanning and uploading it to their servers but I don't think that's done yet. For apple, if you have those icloud backups on your apps then I know for sure they can see imessage stuff.
But what I'm saying is, maybe leave your devices at home and share your signal or matrix username information so when you guys come home, you can hop on to those encrypted platforms and organize and share content.
I think Briar works on bluetooth messaging but only on Androids so it's cool but not too useful for a general purpose messenger.
Google backs up a history of your notifications, so if you have signal setup to show notifications, that's on Google's servers.
This article says all notifications are e2ee
https://tecnobits.com/en/how-to-receive-push-notifications-in-signal/
This privacyguides forum says google knows some metadata but not the contents
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/what-are-the-privacy-implications-of-using-google-notifications/25895/3
Beware, there's a difference between "push notifications" (which is what your links are talking about) and "notifications", specifically with the "notification history" feature.
Push notifications are a mechanism to transport messages over google services. What that does is that the backend service of some app (e.g. the Signal server) can send a message to an app that's currently not actively running to tell it that there's something new happening, e.g. a new incoming message. This goes via Google services because that way, the app doesn't need to be constantly running. Google services then wakes up the app and allow it to do something with that info, e.g. display a notification.
The alternative is that the app is constantly running, constantly actively checking for new messages and thus constantly consuming power.
This can be e2e encrypted by the app, and then Google can only see metadata.
Notifications, on the other hand are the things that show up on your phone when you swipe down from the top navigation bar. These notifications can be read in plain text by any app on your phone, including the OS. If you have Notification History enabled, they can be backed up (again in plain text) to Google's servers. And any old app you have on your phone can silently do the same. That's why Signal allows you to hide the text content and/or sender name for notifications.