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Comment by bastawhiz | Hacker News Reader

This isn't great advice if it's supposed to be an alternative to text messaging with a carrier (especially if you're using encrypted RCS).

For one, meshcore doesn't do a fantastic job of protecting metadata. Advertisements include your public key, and if I'm reading this[0] right, your GPS coordinates.

Second, the default public channel uses effectively no encryption at all.

Moreover, the network doesn't exhaustively prevent someone who intercepts a packet from identifying who sent it. It's no Signal.

[0] https://deepwiki.com/meshcore-dev/MeshCore/7.1-packet-struct...

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All telemetry is off by default, you have to explicitly tune it on and then optionally permit specific contacts to poll it.

The PKI is basic because these networks are tiny and merging. And running on tiny computers ($5 boards with no display)

Public channel is public and it uses the default encryption key because it's a default channel, so by definition everyone is invited to participate. Not sure what your critique is.

And no, it's not trying to be signal. It's also currently less reliable.

But it's still safer than Sms, by a country mile.

It's bad advice because:

1. Telling someone to use one of these devices because their phone carrier might look up their location is silly in the first place, because meshcore doesn't even eliminate the possibility of being tracked geographically.

2. It protects your messages better than SMS but if you care about the privacy of your messages, it's infinitely worse advice than suggesting someone use Signal or another app that actually replaces SMS securely.

You aren’t reading this right. Gps sharing is off by default on meshcore.

Still falls flat when it comes to metadata privacy. Just having multiple nodes distributed geographically that listen for packets would give you the ability to narrow down the location of a specific identity dramatically, even if you're not in range of their device.

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