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Comment by adrusi | Hacker News Reader

It wasn't a thing before Skype, but it predates Discord, and might predate Whatsapp, or at least predates me hearing about Whatsapp in the US.

It was a hobby project originally started by a bunch of anons in 4chan, and every time it gets attention, people point out it hasn't been audited, and no one has their reputation at stake. And it doesn't have any desktop/mobile sync.

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Not being audited is key here. Would you trust closed source software to live up to its security promises without audits? I sure wouldn't!

Well this is free software, but u less you're competent to audit it yourself, it's still unwise to rely on its security promises. But for people who don't need the guarantees, it would be nice if Tox were more convenient to use.

What are the benefits of Tox without the guarantees?

Not intended as snark. Genuinely interested.

Does it have some features there that are superior to other systems? (Outside of the obvious features that are not guaranteed via audit.)

Wait, there's a lot in the obvious features.

But security and privacy are not really guaranteed. (Unless you are a person capable of performing an audit yourself.) Presumably those who need security and privacy would need the guarantee. So I was wondering outside of those two, are there other compelling features Tox could be marketing?

I understood it that features that are not guaranteed via audit are features other than security and privacy. And features outside of features that are not guaranteed via audit are two features - security and privacy.

Even if the security is half as good as they claim, it's still much, much better than proprietary chat apps that do no encryption whatsoever and store all your messages on their servers in plaintext.

Also, there will only be real incentive to audit it if it becomes more popular.

Sure, but Tox has to beat Signal and self-hosted Matrix, not Telegram.

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