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Disappearing messages for Signal

whispersystems.org

21–30 of 187 posts

Re: Disappearing messages for Signal

#21
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less- and more-comprehensive versions of dictionaries is a long-standing thing. And you've usually had to pay for all of them—I think it's weirder that you'd expect to have a fully-complete version of something that takes a lot of expert knowledge and time to put together for free.

It's interesting to think about it this way. I do have dictionaries of different sizes that I've paid for, yet somehow the differences between them didn't strike me the same way this marketing campaign does.

Good point, the internet does make the upsell much much much more in-your-face.

Re: Disappearing messages for Signal

#23
post #8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be strictly a recipient controlled option, only affecting the recipient's view then. Anything else is still a misleading UX for the sender, and assumes people read the fine print. They don't.

If you want a recipient controlled option that already exists as you can set the number of messages you want to save before old ones are deleted. Not deleting the messages from the senders view just to teach users a lesson about security doesn't make any sense and would just confuse people. Showing a warning about it still being possible to take a picture of the phone with another camera would make more sense but see…

It's very simple. In the same feature as pruning old messages by count, add by time. Allow this on a per-conversation level. Done.

Re: Disappearing messages for Signal

#24
post #22

I've been receiving a bunch of "Bad encrypted message..." lately. Wonder what's up with that.

Tons of those, plus repeats, and "random" delays. Sometimes it takes a few minutes for messages to go through (single check). Last week was really bad. I don't know how multiple messages can happen; shouldn't they have a unique ID?

Re: Disappearing messages for Signal

#25
I had an idea a few days ago where you authenticate your identity (i.e. numeric fingerprint) on-demand by sending a pic of yourself where the QR code is overlayed as blacked-out pixels before being transmitted. Then the recipient can look at the photo to see it hasn't been manipulated, and use the app to verify the QR codes match.

I'm sure there are issues with this, but it seems like a nice feature for when secure out-of-band communication is not possible.

Re: Disappearing messages for Signal

#26
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to think about it this way. I do have dictionaries of different sizes that I've paid for, yet somehow the differences between them didn't strike me the same way this marketing campaign does.

Good point, the internet does make the upsell much much much more in-your-face.

It's more than that; I'm old enough to have carried a compact Spanish-English dictionary while traveling. An unabridged dictionary was heavy enough that you couldn't hold it in one hand.

In other words, there used to be such a thing as 'too much dictionary'. Now, like any other information source, it's the size of my phone, except when it's the size of my laptop.

Re: Disappearing messages for Signal

#27
post #22

I've been receiving a bunch of "Bad encrypted message..." lately. Wonder what's up with that.

Tons of those, plus repeats, and "random" delays. Sometimes it takes a few minutes for messages to go through (single check). Last week was really bad. I don't know how multiple messages can happen; shouldn't they have a unique ID?

Last week was due to server issues https://whispersystems.discoursehosting.net/t/intermittent-m...

Re: Disappearing messages for Signal

#30
post #9

I'm not sure that this is a benefit. It gives users a false sense of security. Screenshots or pictures can always be taken on the other end. Didn't signal used to be explicitly against this feature.

If their sense is that -- after configuring 1 week self destruct, the people they're talking to likely won't be keeping months and months of chat logs on their phone anymore -- it's a very true sense of security.

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