Wire (secure chat)

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Midas
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Wire (secure chat)

#1 Post by Midas »

Chating apps seem to be all the rage lately. Wire is yet another entry in that crowded field that deserves mention by allegedly being secure, multi-platform and mobile (no phone number needed).

Alas, it is yet another Electron based program -- which also seem to be all the rage right now -- and I'm quite sure it isn't natively portable (precluding me from testing further)...
https://wire.com/ wrote:[Wire] Modern communication. Full privacy. iOS. Android. Windows. Mac. Web. [sic]
Image


Download Wire latest Windows release (currently v2.11.2661) at https://wire.com/download/.

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webfork
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Re: Wire (secure chat)

#2 Post by webfork »

Article from earlier this year talking about the program: http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/03 ... s-on-wire/

Impressive. It looks like it's open source and uses some pretty solid, well-tested tech for communication including WebRTC for audio/video and OTR for text.

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smaragdus
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Re: Wire

#3 Post by smaragdus »

In fact the current Wire version for Windows (as of 2016.10.22) is 2.10.2652:

Image

Two images of Wire on Windows:

program:

Image

preferences:

Image

I cannot test Wire alone.

Wire installation folder- C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\wire
Wire settings folder- C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Wire

My complaints:
  • Wire is not portable.
  • Wire installs in AppData without asking- it features these modern one-click installers which give the user absolutely no choice.
  • Wire is the definition of bloat- 171 MB installed.
  • Wire offers almost no customization (despite these 171 MB) as seen in "Preferences".
  • Wire is not serverless which means that if one day Wire Swiss goes out of business all the contacts one has will be lost- I have suffered this several times and I am getting more and more skeptical about messengers that rely on a central server.
A couple of Wire links:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/C ... GmbH.shtml - Wire at Softpedia
https://alternativeto.net/software/wire/ - Wire at AlternativeTo

Nowadays Electron is the most modern scourge and surprisingly it doesn't come from M$.

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webfork
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Re: Wire

#4 Post by webfork »

smaragdus wrote:not portable
Thanks for checking

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webfork
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Re: Wire (secure chat)

#5 Post by webfork »

I really liked Signal's program's simplicity but there's no Windows client yet and I needed something that worked with iOS. As such, I came back to Wire.

Status: no change versus smaragdus' work here. It's still not portable despite trying a few tricks. Still writing the whole program to appdata.

---

EDIT: a portable version has been requested.

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smaragdus
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Re: Wire

#6 Post by smaragdus »

Secure Messaging App Wire Stores Everyone You've Ever Contacted in Plain Text
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... plain-text

freakazoid
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Re: Wire (secure chat)

#7 Post by freakazoid »

You don't need the app, use the web client in a compatible browser like Chrome.
is it stealth? ;)

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Re: Wire

#8 Post by webfork »

smaragdus wrote:Secure Messaging App Wire Stores Everyone You've Ever Contacted in Plain Text
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... plain-text
That's frustrating but based on what I know about the programs, I would definitely give Wire a better security grade than WhatsApp.

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webfork
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Re: Wire (secure chat)

#9 Post by webfork »

Update: there's been some movement on a portable version, but it looks unclear whether or not it really works:

https://github.com/wireapp/wire-desktop ... -319074472

I'll undoubtedly have a use for this program in the coming months so hopefully I'll get back to test that.

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webfork
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Re: Wire (formerly secure chat)

#10 Post by webfork »

Looks like we have portability: https://github.com/wireapp/wire-desktop ... -331674489

Moving to Submission thread.

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Re: Wire (formerly secure chat)

#11 Post by webfork »

I wasn't a big fan of the Wire app for a few reasons, but recent news probably takes it out of consideration as a "secure" app: https://alternativeto.net/news/2019/11/ ... vacytools/

I understand they want to differentiate themselves from a long list of other apps but, if the initial draw to your app was privacy/security, there's not much left to build on.

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