Looking for a skype alternative

[vstar950]

I am looking for a free app

An app that does not data mine my phone and ask permission or demand permission to read information, personal information, contacts, location, my phone number, or any information on my phone or of the sort.

Does anybody currently use anything like this and what is it?

 

[Dead2009]

Discord?

 

[SylverReZ]

Discord?

Read the first post:

does not data mine my phone and ask permission or demand permission to read information, personal information, contacts, location, my phone number, or any information on my phone or of the sort.

Discord is very privacy invasive as it collects and uses your data to train their AI bots, as well as track everything about you. Not only that, but you need a phone number to use the platform. So no, do not use Discord if you want to protect your data.

Does anybody currently use anything like this and what is it?

Closest would be to encrypt your messages with something like PGP or use an XMPP client which has VoIP support. Never use VPNs as the companies that host them collect your data, which can be useful for authorities to track you.

 

[tech3475]

What functionality/use case are you after? Signal I often see recommended as an alternative to WhatsApp, although I can't recall if it would fulfil your requirements.

 

[vstar950]

Discord?

Yes. I have that one. I should have said that. I am looking for others.

Post automatically merged: Mar 4, 2025

What functionality/use case are you after? Signal I often see recommended as an alternative to WhatsApp, although I can't recall if it would fulfil your requirements.

Similar to skype but is safe and requires maximum an email account to activate. I am using android.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I am looking for a free app

An app that does not data mine my phone and ask permission or demand permission to read information, personal information, contacts, location, my phone number, or any information on my phone or of the sort.

Does anybody currently use anything like this and what is it?

Signal sounds like the thing for you, seems like Matrix also has voice and video calls but that aspect of it is quite limited and setting up and using Matrix is not as user friendly.

 

[Vetusomaru]

Discord?

He said "An app that does not data mine my phone and ask permission or demand permission to read information, personal information, contacts, location, my phone number, or any information on my phone or of the sort". Discord does all this shit.

Post automatically merged: Mar 4, 2025

Unfortunately chat apps that don't violate your privacy and whatnot are ones that barely anyone uses.

 

[vstar950]

I did not ask what is popular. But I must throw in that I am also using an iPhone at this point. So something they can run on both iPhone and Android

 

[Evilengine]

Based on this.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-record_messaging
I found this: https://xmpp.org/software/monocles-chat/

And it is available through F-Droid alternative app store:
https://f-droid.org/de/packages/de.monocles.chat/


no guarantee for anything.

 

[Segger]

For years I used to host my own Mumble and TeamSpeak 3 voice chat server off an old PC that I had in my house that a dozen or so of my friends would use all the time for chatting and gaming.

Nowadays you could probably run them in a docker container on a raspberry pi or something.

They're free and potentially self-hosted, the difficult part is just getting people to download and install it I guess.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Jitsi Meet, a self hosted open source videoconferencing software may be worth looking into. https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet

 

[vstar950]

Thank you for that info. I have someone in another country that uses an iphone that I communicate. And since skype is dying and discord seems to not know whether it will still be available or not, It would be nice to have a replacement app that runs on windows, ios, and android.