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Comment by ano-ther | Hacker News Reader

> Our suggestion, what we have told folks internally, is not new here: encryption is your friend, whether it’s on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication.

Solid advice. But how do I get encrypted voice communication? Are Signal‘s or WhatsApp‘s calls encrypted?

Also, they sound so much worse than an old-fashioned call.

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> how do I get encrypted voice communication? Are Signal‘s or WhatsApp‘s calls encrypted?

Yes [1][2]. Also FaceTime audio [3]. I find the latter better quality than standard calls.

[1] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007060492-Vo...

[2] https://faq.whatsapp.com/820124435853543

[3] https://support.apple.com/guide/security/facetime-security-s...

WhatsApp and Signal will strongly reduce bandwidth if you're routing your call through their servers. You can disable that (which does expose your IP address to the other side) and let standard P2P traffic do its thing. You'll still need good net neutrality laws for the calls to be of any useful quality (RIP video calling in the US for the next four years or more I guess) but the bandwidth problem is usually artificial.

Even Telegram has encrypted phone calls. Hell, even SIP+RTP, which regular modern calling is based on, has encryption capabilities. Of course your phone won't ever do that by default (your government wouldn't like phones they can't wiretap at all) but in theory we don't even need to drop the phone number system to get privacy back.

I told all my contacts (including family) not to bother calling me unless it's over Signal, almost ten years ago. It has really cut a lot of crap from my life.

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