<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <style type="text/css" style="display:none"></style> </head> <body dir="ltr" style="font-size:12pt;color:#000000;background-color:#FFFFFF;font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <p>There is spam on regular SMS, for sure. There would be a lot more of it if sending was free. I'm not sure if WhatsApp is spam free either, I don't use it. Maybe spammers haven't gotten around to it yet. Skype is centralized, and spammers certainly got to that.<br> </p> <p><br> </p> <p>I agree it's easier to control spam in a centralized context, and also agree Pond has some compelling features over TextSecure in a centralized context, but I don't think any serious messaging standard or successor to email can or should be centralized. I don't want to make my communications captive to any single entity, no matter how benign it may seem to be.<br> </p> <p><br> </p> <div style="color: rgb(33, 33, 33);"> <hr tabindex="-1" style="display:inline-block; width:98%"> <div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font style="font-size:11pt" face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> mh.in.england@gmail.com <mh.in.england@gmail.com> on behalf of Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net><br> <b>Sent:</b> Monday, September 22, 2014 7:05 AM<br> <b>To:</b> Sean Comeau<br> <b>Cc:</b> Trevor Perrin; messaging<br> <b>Subject:</b> Re: [messaging] fyi: metadata-eliminating tor-based chat program: Ricochet</font> <div> </div> </div> <div> <div dir="ltr"> <div class="gmail_extra"> <div class="gmail_quote"> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:1px #ccc solid; padding-left:1ex"> <div dir="ltr" style="font-size:12pt; color:#000000; background-color:#ffffff; font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"> <p>That's true, the TextSecure server always knows who the sender and recipient are, regardless. Adding Tor to the sender side would only deny the server knowledge of the sender's IP address. <br> </p> </div> </blockquote> <div>Right, but with the group signature scheme Pond uses, the server can also be denied knowledge of which of a users contacts is sending the message. This seems like a powerful privacy upgrade.</div> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:1px #ccc solid; padding-left:1ex"> <div dir="ltr" style="font-size:12pt; color:#000000; background-color:#ffffff; font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"> <p><span style="font-size:12pt">The only thing preventing this from being more than a theoretical problem is the lack of mainstream adoption, and thus profit motive.</span></p> </div> </blockquote> <div>WhatsApp has the same design and no spam, as does regular SMS. It's pretty simple to just ban users who spam, in the centralised context.</div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </body> </html>