Baptist Wiki

There are many countries where people are not allowed to freely access websites with Christian resources hosted on them. They may not be able to freely meet and swap equipment either. These situations require a great deal of planning and caution: unless all involved parties are extremely careful, users may be exposed online or in person.

This is one of the most complex topics to discuss, as it requires an understanding of numerous technologies and protocols to succeed, in addition to an understanding of operations security and critical information. To keep things simple, loose lips sink ships. Sometimes you need to keep sensitive details (critical information) secret, or reserve discussion of those topics for face to face interactions. All digital communications should be considered unsafe and compromised by default. Electronic devices can be used as bugs and trackers and should not be taken to private locations or ones in which sensitive (critical) information is discussed.

If local ISP's or governments are blocking access to one of our websites, a VPN or other tool is needed. Configure the VPN to exit in a country where service is unlikely to be down or censored. TOR is another viable option, but make sure that its use won't get you in trouble: some countries don't like people circumventing censorship or snooping.

Common communication platforms (like Gmail or Facebook Messenger) are compromised. They are not secure, or private. User data is regularly given to law enforcement and government organizations. All communications should be moved to secure decentralized services, or at the very least, secure services. See this page on the Free Software Foundation GNU website for examples of common software that spies on the users. All of the programs below are open source, which means anyone (including you) can view every line of the source code that was used to build the program. Countless people work to patch any security vulnerabilities and expose any that may develop. There is near 100% transparency. The tools are also free to use and modify as you see fit: if you want to download the source to keep on hand for a rainy day, go ahead.

Follow the links for setup instructions.

• Signal Messenger is an easy to use cross-platform tool. It is very secure, and because the data is encrypted, censorship is unlikely, but still possible since it relies on a central server for message forwarding. It associates users via phone number, so it is not anonymous. But, as a first-step tool, it is often acceptable, and one of the easiest.
• XMPP is our preferred option, although it requires a little more work than Signal or Simplex. It permits anonymous usage on either public servers or a self-hosted instance. Messages can be encrypted using OMEMO, and because the users hold their encryption keys and not the server, censorship is very unlikely. This system permits large groups, image and file sharing, and more. The XMPP website notes, “NATO use it for tactical chat,” which would seem to indicate an above-average level of security and privacy.
• Simplex is another unique tool. It does not associate any key or hash with the users: each contact makes a unique connection that has no commonalities with any other chat. As a result, it is extremely anonymous and very secure. You must select a server to use for chats: there are several hosted by Simplex (the defaults), and users can host their own, if desired. Third-party servers could be used as well, decentralizing the platform.
• Session Messenger is no longer recommended due to lack of PFS and double ratchet encryption, in addition to the recent bugs with message deletion and key rotation.

• Paragraph.xyz An anonymous publishing platform with AirWeave integration.
• Nostr.net A decentralized, self-hostable, “open protocol for censorship-resistant global networks.”
• Mirror.xyz A decentralized publishing platform similar to Paragraph, but seemingly more popular.