Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts • Hacker News Board

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#61

Post by godelski » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

MrAwesome wrote: post #39

Several years ago, when I worked at FB, I ran into a similar bug on an early internal version of a Messenger rewrite. Sent pictures to one chat, showed up in another. My bug report on it kicked off an absolute maelstrom of dev activity and investigation. High level engineers showed up in the comments. Lots of immediate followup. The severity was clearly understood and resolving it was clearly prioritized. I exclusive…

I don't think Signal has many devs[0] and if you look at the contributors[1] you can see that Grayson is pretty much the only dev for the Android app. So seeing a second dev get involved is probably them freaking out.

[0] Personally I believe this is a big bump in the road for Signal and is why a lot of people are frustrated. About promises about things like usernames (it is no longer early 2021), channels, and everything else. A few devs can only do so much. A dozen (maybe 2 dozen?) devs can still only do so much. How do you compete with other platforms like Telegram that has hundreds of employees or WhatsApp with far more than that?

[1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/graphs/contribut...

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#62

Post by sschueller » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

MacD83 wrote: post #34

I'm rooting for Delta Chat [1] which puts a nice chat UI on top of email. It is such a brilliant and simple solution. It is decentralized unlike Signal which recently had big reliability problems when new users flooded in. [1] https://delta.chat

Isn't this going to pollute my mail server with thousands of individual chat "emails" instead of a few large emails?

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#63

Post by FabHK » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #22

jerkstate wrote: post #11

Signal has been adding lots of silly social media like features lately, not surprising that they are messing up the core value prop. I’m shopping for a new encrypted messenger. They used to say every program expands in scope until it can read email, now every app expands until you can add Snapchat filters to your selfies.

is Wire still around and does somebody know if it's good? I remember reading about it because it used Haskell but I never tried it out.

I used it and found it excellent, fully featured (chat/voice/video), use phone or email as identifier, and supported on all devices (iOS, Android, Mac, Win, Linux).

I don't understand why it didn't take off - seems like a modern version of Betamax/VHS to me.

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#64

Post by spinax » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

MacD83 wrote: post #34

I'm rooting for Delta Chat [1] which puts a nice chat UI on top of email. It is such a brilliant and simple solution. It is decentralized unlike Signal which recently had big reliability problems when new users flooded in. [1] https://delta.chat

I had to dig a little bit to get a better view of "will this make a mess of my email if I try/test it without commitment?"; the tl;dr is basically:

(a) there is a DeltaChat subfolder in your IMAP storing the messages;

(b) the app looks for a "Chat-Version" header on emails to know to move it to (a) folder (and you can set a server side rule to also do that);

(c) a number of popular email providers (IMAP is used) are listed with some notes to help you get started: https://providers.delta.chat/; and

(d) it's using the Autocrypt/PGP standards and you can apparently import your existing PGP key if you want

It's all in the FAQ or other docs, just highlighting the things which I wanted to know straightaway before making a mess by accident just to give it a try.

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#65

Post by rococode » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

MrAwesome wrote: post #39

Several years ago, when I worked at FB, I ran into a similar bug on an early internal version of a Messenger rewrite. Sent pictures to one chat, showed up in another. My bug report on it kicked off an absolute maelstrom of dev activity and investigation. High level engineers showed up in the comments. Lots of immediate followup. The severity was clearly understood and resolving it was clearly prioritized. I exclusive…

They've just posted an update saying that the issue was fixed on July 21. It's certainly good that it's fixed...

But that's still over 7 months before it was fixed, including a 2 month period where people were still bumping the issue asking for help with no response from maintainers (afterwards, the issue went quiet until ~2 weeks ago). And there was at least one other issue on the same problem a few months later that received no response [1].

I understand the team is probably understaffed given the vast number of open issues (1300+) they have, many with no response, and I can sympathize with the challenges of being a small team developing an app used by millions, but they probably need to figure out a better way to triage...

[1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/11137

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#66

Post by egberts1 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

colesantiago wrote: post #18

Signal is becoming a joke that we should reconsider using, and now has dangerous bugs that is at the edge of compromising people's privacy. Has this app/service really been audited properly? We now need to consider serious alternatives that we should get behind like Element [0] or Session [1] but I am open to user friendly alternatives other than Signal (at worst even Quill [2] or Delta Chat [3]). [0] https://element…

Quill? Why would we want to use Quill that needs all of our private data?

Have you not seen over at Apple App Store what they’re sucking off of your phone from your Quill app?

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#67

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

dmosley wrote: post #49

ubercow13 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Signal's only selling point is privacy. Both of these bugs are huge privacy breaches that kill its value proposition. Which type of privacy breach is more likely to have tangible and direct negative effects on an average user's life - a nation state storing their communications in a database, Facebook graphing their contacts and using them for friend recommendations, or their friends/family/boss/acquaintances be…

I agree these bugs that Signal has are serious. With hat said, your examples aren't that great for counters. "a nation state storing their communications in a database" - The power differential and historic missteps of governments makes this ludicrous to think of as "OK" in comparison. "Facebook graphing their contacts and using them for friend recommendations" - but, it's not just for friend recommendations and poss…

[deleted]

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#68

Post by detaro » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

sschueller wrote: post #62

MacD83 wrote: post #34

I'm rooting for Delta Chat [1] which puts a nice chat UI on top of email. It is such a brilliant and simple solution. It is decentralized unlike Signal which recently had big reliability problems when new users flooded in. [1] https://delta.chat

Isn't this going to pollute my mail server with thousands of individual chat "emails" instead of a few large emails?

Dealing with thousands of messages in a folder somewhere is not really problem for mail servers.

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#69

Post by saurik » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

hn8788 wrote: post #56

mdoms wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on Earth are people downvoting you? This is an absolute dealbreaker for any messaging app, much less one whose raison d'etre is privacy and secure messaging.

Probably because the common mindset here is that anyone can make a mistake, and that the person who did it learned their lesson and will never do it again.

And to verify, the "mistake" is seeming to not actually care that this was a serious bug for 7 months (cough while they launched MobileCoin)? That is an attitude issue--and one endemic to Signal (which, most charitably, simply doesn't have the resources to sufficiently care sometimes)--not a "mistake" I expect to be easily rectified.

(And as I mention on a nearby post: you don't have to fix it to widely disclose it; like, you don't work in the dark to fix an issue like this for seven months as, even if it were your "top priority": you quickly time box it and then disclose the issue so people can mitigate their exposure or help better crowdsource finding the information you need to fix the issue.)

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#70

Post by godelski » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

jerkstate wrote: post #11

Signal has been adding lots of silly social media like features lately, not surprising that they are messing up the core value prop. I’m shopping for a new encrypted messenger. They used to say every program expands in scope until it can read email, now every app expands until you can add Snapchat filters to your selfies.

Personally I want to have secure communications with _all_ my friends and family, not just the paranoid tech nerds and people I can pressure into it.

If this is what the masses want, give it to them. Encryption only works if people use it.