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Comment by gehsty | Hacker News Reader

As a layman in terms of security and operating systems, is this actually more secure or private than using iOS in lockdown mode and communicating via iMessage? Feels OTT for anything you might talk about in a personal relationship

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A lot of privacy fanatics (myself included) are also open source fanatics. I like to be able to wrap my own tinfoil hat even if it is harder and a bit more uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable yes, but you need to pay attention to details that big tinfoil fashion can't be bothered with. For example, you can't use Reynolds wrap because it was modified with preforations for the government. They say that was to keep your Jonny Wurster's from smoking crack, but obviously sub-nanometer waves..

I'm usually wearing a simple double-williams wrap with a D-battery on top for charge. Keep safe from those 5G's, friend.

Does this mean that open source is more important than privacy to people of this mindset? Again from my layman’s perspective I would expect the hardened iPhone, using iMessage and key verification, to be more secure.

Well, first of all I think if something is open source it will tend to be more privacy-focused since it will disclose what it tracks. People will either find that acceptable or fork and change.

> Does this mean that open source is more important than privacy to people of this mindset?

Not exactly, but I think the questions should really be something like "who is the guarantor of your privacy?"

If you are happy with it being a corporation like apple then you're fine. I'm not, and what we consider more secure would have to be a much deeper conversation in which we actually define our threat models.

True, I’m very interested in understanding how secure the open source alternative is, I struggle to believe it is as secure as there are so many layers, and the surface seems much bigger. I guess if you are worried about being hacked then the open source method is likely less secure, but if you are worried about being monitored then Apple is more of a risk as you don’t know what goes on behind their servers etc.

My general stance is that the fewer things I need to trust the more secure I am. That goes for services, companies, dependencies, programs, etc.

Besides that there is also all of the transitive points, like what does apple trust? What does google trust?

I'm not sure if I'm more secure, but I am sure that I have less people influencing my security and that I have a reasonable way to validate them.

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