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Signal is having technical difficulties

status.signal.org

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Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#251

Post by whichquestion »

sedev wrote: post #114
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But it’s par for the course for newly popular services. It is, but most consumers don't care, they just what their stuff to work 100% of the time as frictionless as possible, and, on top of all things, for free. Otherwise they just run back to the usual free surveilanceware. I've tried and failed to convince some young, highly educated zoomer friends with good incomes to move away from WhatsApp and Facebook and even…

Using Telegram is a rational decision if you want a service that's good at fun conversations. Signal's value proposition is _secure conversations_ and it does that much better than other services. "Fun" is not part of Signal's value proposition. More people want/need fun conversations than need secure ones. Regardless of what people "should" want, Telegram serves people's mundane everyday needs materially better than…

I don’t believe fun conversations are mutually exclusive with secure communications. You can have fun conversations with them being secure from prying eyes.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#252

Post by lucb1e »

pbronez wrote: post #230
lucb1e wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me think it isn't: https://security.stackexchange.com/q/222055/10863 > after [installing the Keybase app] and starting a chat with your friend, you still need to verify that the server sent you the right encryption key. Since you can't host your own server, it has to be the Keybase, Inc's server that sends you the encryption key of your friend. > there is no way to display [the 'signature chain' of the per…

The whole point of Keybase is that you could verify the keys that the server sent you by looking at signed statements posted on third-party websites. That verification happens client side.

Read the post. I've had this discussion dozens of times now, everyone repeats the same arguments, all based on what Keybase puts out, never checking anything for themselves or even logically reasoning about how this could work (for those who bring up blockchain instead of third party proofs). There's a reason I link the information you're looking for, you don't even have to check it for yourself anymore.

> It was mentioned on hacker news that the app should check third party proofs by itself. This is not exactly what end to end encryption means since it still relies on third parties, but nevertheless, having to [compromise] 2 or more companies' servers before being able to MitM someone's keys (which are additionally TOFU'd) should give quite some confidence.

> However, when checking in Wireshark whether it actually does this (ask the Twitter API for the proof string and verify the signature with the the public key it received from Keybase), Keybase on my phone did not contact Twitter at all. (It did, however, proudly proclaim that the new chat was end to end encrypted.)

> The packet capture started before the username was typed into the search field on the test device and ended only after Keybase completely established the chat and claimed it was end to end encrypted.

> It is deemed implausible for the mobile Keybase client to simply have downloaded all signature chains from all users that exist on Keybase and to have checked all their proofs prior to starting the packet capture. This is the only way I can think of how the third party hosted proof could have been verified prior to the packet capture.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#253

Post by rd11235 »

tomp wrote: post #4

At least they tell you about it - there's a banner on the top of the app. Last time WhatsApp was having issues, it didn't give any indication - messages just weren't being delivered (but as a user, there's no way to distinguish between "no messages" and "messages not being delivered").

I've personally had (many) more signal issues than WhatsApp issues, and not one of the signal issues was accompanied by a banner.

I am not vouching for WhatsApp. I just don't think we should pretend that Signal is more reliable than it is.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#254

Post by helmholtz »

corndoge wrote: post #124
sean_pedersen wrote: post #94

Time to jump ship! Use element / matrix an open, decentralized, end-to-end encrypted chat protocol with slick clients for Android, iOS, Desktop & Web: https://element.io/ Also easy to self-host a server, if you need full control: $ mkdir -p ~/synapse $ pip3.6 install --user jinja2 matrix-synapse $ cd ~/synapse $ python3.6 -m synapse.app.homeserver \ --server-name my.domain.name \ --config-path homeserver.yaml \ --gen…

Thanks, I'll send this guide to my mom!

Exactly. GP's comment is the most HN thing I've every seen.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#255

Post by munfred »

oblio wrote: post #148
sean_pedersen wrote: post #94

Time to jump ship! Use element / matrix an open, decentralized, end-to-end encrypted chat protocol with slick clients for Android, iOS, Desktop & Web: https://element.io/ Also easy to self-host a server, if you need full control: $ mkdir -p ~/synapse $ pip3.6 install --user jinja2 matrix-synapse $ cd ~/synapse $ python3.6 -m synapse.app.homeserver \ --server-name my.domain.name \ --config-path homeserver.yaml \ --gen…

Can I use it if I don't want to host a server? Are there any trustworthy public servers?

You can use the public matrix server that offers an interface to it with the Element web client and is maintained by Element the company (used to be called New Vector): https://app.element.io/

If you do want to set up your own server I wrote a guide when I learned how to do it with Google cloud instances: https://munfred.com/matrix

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#257

Post by rvz »

chopin24 wrote: post #211
lerax wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should considered Telegram instead.

Telegram is insecure and also being swamped with right wingers. Doesn’t seem promising.

> also being swamped with right wingers

So is Signal. 'right wingers' are everywhere.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#258

Post by bilal4hmed »

olah_1 wrote: post #235
bilal4hmed wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have $100 mn in donation from Acton

Weird that it isn't listed in the data in that document. I have no idea why anyone would donate $20 when they're sipping on $100m ...

$100 million given current growth wont last as long. Telegram 4 years had a run rate of $1 million per month for servers and dev costs. At that time they had about 200 million users.

Signal is using AWS & GCP ( for cloud fronting ), they could be approaching that spend level.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#259

Post by dmitrygr »

alan5 wrote: post #71

I just donated to Signal after seeing the error banner in the app. I realised I was more than happy to pay WhatsApp's yearly charge back in the pre-Facebook days (think it was 70p or so?). Figured I could give Signal a few quid every now and then, maybe keep a server up for a few seconds :) Donation link should anyone be interested: https://signal.org/donate/

Good idea. Just did too!
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