Um... hi... I'm a 17 year old male... and I wanted to find a place I could somewhat safely express myself and my feelings for animals...
I feel like a lot of animals are very smart and have emotions like us; maybe it sounds silly, but I feel real emotional connections to some animals... like horses and dogs.
A couple years ago, I had the thought in my head of making love to an animal, and I tried not to think about it for a long while but... I've finally just come to the conclusion that I am a zoophile, plain and simple.
I don't feel shame for feeling how I do, but I also know that its something I can't share with anyone... so I figured I should come here and maybe meet people? See what the conmunity is like? And maybe make some friends who will accept and understand that side of me....
I'm sorry for being so weird and awkward. I'm kinda shy, and nervous about talking about this kinda stuff.
Welcome to /r/zopphipila.
You don't strike me as a very awkward poster. You should see how some political forums and communiction channels can get. Those have awkward people.
Lol what happened to your /r/ link
My first thought was to correct it, but I have thought twice and I am gonna leave it there for historical and lol reasons.
Hi! I'm glad you stopped by. I know exactly how you must feel, as do most people here. Nearly everyone has been nervous and new at some point. I entered the community right around your age(and I'm not too much older lol).
Meeting people is easy, as long as you stick around for a bit in the community :). As for actually doing the meeting bit, I have found telegram to be the most secure and most common method of communication. You may also feel free to PM me if you wanna chat or need help with anything, have questions, etc. I love meeting people.
Telegram does not sound like the safest method in the bag. You have to provide the service operator with a phone number and that is always bad news.
Actually it isn't always bad news, and there are very easy ways to circumvent using your carrier number such as Google voice
Yeah, but then your account authentication token (the phone number) is controlled by yet another third party :-(
Yeah but they also have multi-factor authentication including alphanumeric passwords to login and a pin to lock the app. Changing your cell number on the account is a snap as long as you have more than one device logged in so even if you phone number were to be immediately taken from you you could put a different one on the account. It includes a stack of encryption and hashing protocols(AES256 and SHA-1 w/salt) that prevent any data transmitted over the servers from being read even if they WANTED TO they couldn't distribute any chat data. On top of all that their code is all open source and transparent and I don't think I've seen any chat client(save for whickr) that was that open and focused on user security.
I remember Skype used to be the big thing and the security on that is laughable. Your IP and therefore general location is public information with Skype. Kik has and does work with police in the past to bust people(I see a lot more BF users or fetishists using this)
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Telegram also supports third party sticker packs and im sure all the furries know what that's all about lol but it adds an extra level of fun to the chatting.
I'm not like a telegram spokesperson or anything lol I just see it as a stand-out competitor to most all of the chat clients of recent years. It is the sleekest, most secure, and most well-rounded client that I've personally seen.
Their encrytion method is controversial at best. I don't think you could break it easily with a workstation, but some concerns have been raised by reputable people.
The client code is open, the server code isn't. Not that it matters much because in an end-to-end encryption system you only need the client to be safe.
End-to-end encrypted chats only work when the user enables them on purpose, and then only for person-to-person. Group messages are sent encrypted to the server, but the server keeps unencrypted copies. Person-to-person messages that are sent over chats started as non-secret chats have the same drawback. At least, that was so last time I ever used it, my information might be outdated.
I'd say Signal is more open and foccused on comms security. It uses end-to-end encryption for every message and the protocol is fairly open. It can work as a federated networks, which is something Telegram was not designed for. Any XMPP client with OTR encryption support is more open and has an equivalent level of message security for person-to-person messages, plus you don't need to mess with phone numbers.
This said, I don't trust any mobile chat system that can be easily used right now. I think most offers are just bad in a way or another.
From the Telegram user FAQ. They continue on in a different spot to say that the keys for these chats are stored on different servers not local to the one your data is stored on. Is it foolproof? No, but they have a 300k bug bounty for anyone who can break through the encryption so they aren't messing around. They also provide a nice diagram of the MTProto protocol they built and how it works.
Here's the more technical FAQ: https://core.telegram.org/techfaq
There needs to be a good balance between security, usability, and compatibility and in my opinion, telegram hits all those most adequately.
Keeping the cloud chat messages encrypted is an improvement, but they still keep the keys. I don't think anything that is not end-to-end encrypted yet claims to be a secure service is very serious unless you have good reasons to trust the server administrator implicitly. This is usually the case if the server administrator is you or your uncle...
Signal's end-to-end encryption mechanism was ported to whatsapp, which is an application used by millions of tech-unaware users. Whatsapp migrated their users to end-to-end encrypted communications massively, so this demostrates that end-to-end for the masses is doable.
Define "needs to be."
For the general public maybe so. If you're doing something a lot of people want to ruin your life over, I think the balance "needs to be" quite a bit stronger in favor of not just security but anonymity.
As said elsewhere, end-to-end encryption is only meaningful if the keys are kept independent of the infrastructure.
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Welcome!
Welcome, then.
Also, don't be shy, we are in similiar situations. It's mostly safe here.
Welcome :)
Welcome to this awkward but accepting place, new friend. :3
Welcome and pleased to meet you