81–90 of 410 posts
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Oh, I'm surprised, after a decade stating that phone numbers were great for ID.
Signal was built as an alternative to SMS so that design makes sense with that goal in mind.
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They're working on usernames, but what's the privacy concern around using your phone number? Is it to be pseudononymous? My use case for Signal is friends and family, and it was easy to get everyone onboard because we all have each other's phone numbers already and didn't need to build a new list of contacts. It's a drop-in Android-compatible replacement for iMessage.
> the privacy concern around using your phone number You have to give up your anonymity to get one in many places.
All that is cool, but I don't want Signal to advertise my presence to anybody that has my phone number when I first log in after a fresh install. I have only a handful of people that know and we negotiated that face to face prior, Signal breaks that trust
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I don't think it's so nefarious... phone numbers were just the easiest way for them to create a portable social graph without requiring users to re-discover if anything changed. Plus, it looks like this move is going to push them in a direction where phone numbers won't be required (as they've indicated previously is in the works).
Ok, but now that it's not tied to phone numbers anymore why do you still need one to sign up? And why has this been "in the works" for years? It's certainly not that hard to implement. Many less capable and mature messengers work without a phone number.
It's hard to implement it in a privacy-preserving way. Many other messengers of similar scale implement it by storing your social graph unencrypted on their servers.
Signal installs via the app store, and you all are freaking out that it might reveal your phone number? Okay, then.
> We built Change Number using the foundation of more exciting features to come. Surely this is referring to the ability to use a non-phone number ID, which they've hinted at before [1]. Looking forward to that, only because I know many others are! [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/kt91qk/comment/...
Oh, I'm surprised, after a decade stating that phone numbers were great for ID.
Signal installs via the app store, and you all are freaking out that it might reveal your phone number? Okay, then.
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Can you explain this a bit more? Am I correct in understanding that you feel it hurts you when your contacts find out that you have signal installed, hence why signal shouldn't do it? What is the impact of someone who has your phone number knowing you are available over Signal? Are there communities out there where someone being on signal is a red flag?
This is just a shade away from the typical "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument, and is in my opinion equally invalid. Let people decide for themselves what in their lives is OK to share with others. You don't need to know the reason why.
The behavior which is reliably objected to by someone on HN, every time Signal is mentioned, is that the app sends a user an alert when someone in their contacts list is on Signal.
Phone numbers are the only resolution mechanism in Signal. Should that change? Separate question.
Having someone's phone number is by definition a way to contact them. Registering for Signal is by definition agreeing that anyone who searches for your phone number can send you a message on Signal.
What is the privacy violation in pushing awareness of that affordance? What about pull-only is better?
Signal does what I want it to here, and my trouble understanding why someone would be ok with everything about Signal except the push notification on join to people who have your number is genuine.
It's easy for me to understand why people don't like that a phone number is inherent to Signal, don't much care for it myself. But it's unrelated.
All that is cool, but I don't want Signal to advertise my presence to anybody that has my phone number when I first log in after a fresh install. I have only a handful of people that know and we negotiated that face to face prior, Signal breaks that trust
Can you explain this a bit more? Am I correct in understanding that you feel it hurts you when your contacts find out that you have signal installed, hence why signal shouldn't do it? What is the impact of someone who has your phone number knowing you are available over Signal? Are there communities out there where someone being on signal is a red flag?
Absolutely. Outside of the tech industry, people have a "reason" for using Signal. My wife remarked one day that one of her coworkers (a plant operator) suddenly appeared on Signal. I mused that he is probably cheating on his wife. She found out a few weeks later that my hunch was correct.
Other people I've seen on it I've been able to deduce that they're using it for drug purchases (simply by process of elimination, nothing else made sense) even when I didn't already know they were into recreational drugs.
In some circles, Signal is used just for general conversation. But in most, it's not. So being on it is a pretty strong signal that you're doing something 'important' on it...and usually its easy for friends and neighbors to narrow down what that is.
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Discord keeps your friend information on their servers. This is, like tptacek said, exactly what Signal is trying to prevent. If servers get seized by the Feds, they don't want to needlessly reveal who's contacting who for everyone. It's about storing as little personal information as they can.
Not only do they keep your friend information on their servers, they maintain a copy of every single message you've ever sent via Discord. Their service is the antithesis of private communications.