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You can change your number

signal.org

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Re: You can change your number

#201

Post by AshamedCaptain »

einpoklum wrote: post #97
yusmary wrote: post #45

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

Yeah, those announcements on Signal and Telegram are super-annoying and awkward. You draw the attention of people with whom you have perhaps decided to let the relationship cool, and suddenly: "Hey, [YOURNAME] is here! Remember him? And how you have unfinished business? Why don't you message him right now?" :-(

This is outright ridiculous. I refuse to get into most "social" networks for this type of crap and now this practically confirms me I should never get into these crappy centralized IM networks.

Re: You can change your number

#202

Post by mburns »

scotty79 wrote: post #186
pomian wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks like a great app. Thanks. Can you send SMS to a regular number with this?

I'm not sure if it's great. It just lets you communicate without endangering valuable resource that your phone number is. > Can you send SMS to a regular number with this? Why would it do that? Every phone has perfectly good sms app. What would that even mean? Using sms as a transport layer? Or making messages passed through internet look like pseudo sms messages to someones phone number?

FWIW, Signal can send SMS to a regular number on Android.

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007321171-Ca...

Re: You can change your number

#203

Post by iqanq »

godelski wrote: post #199
gst wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the real question is what "usernames" will look like. There were hints dropped that this could be stronger than a typical username (like what HN has). Quite a bit of code related to usernames has already been checked into Signal. Here's the username regexp and the method that checks if a username is valid: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/a5e5a735800...

Yeah I'm a little upset about this. It is just set up for birthday problems. I'd be happy if it was you handing out a random string or 1-time code and then you pick a username per chat. But a global username identifier isn't anonymous (not any more than a phone number anyways) and I do not believe is a good solution.

So choose an identifier that does not... identify you. Or choose not to have a username. I assume that that will be an option, since Telegram has it as well.

Re: You can change your number

#204

Post by wolverine876 »

gojomo wrote: post #187
wolverine876 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the app constantly prompts for contact-list access AFAIK, it prompts at first, maybe a few times, but then stops. > Signal's software-on-device definitely has the contact list Definitely not required at all. Signal can use its own contact list. > that software regularly re-sends that encrypted list to Signal's servers' SGX enclaves for their contact-discovery protocol The SGX enclaves are not for contact di…

> AFAIK, it prompts at first, maybe a few times, but then stops. It's been re-prompting me for years. If there's a time it stops, I haven't found it. > I am not sure how Signal backups work or that user contacts, encrypted, are backed up to the SGX enclave. Where does it say that? You're talking about backups. I'm talking about contact-discovery, wherein the client regularly sends (hashed versions of) all the phone n…

Could you provide documentation of that version of how Signal operates? You can see the links from Signal and Matthew Green that I supplied.

> I'm talking about contact-discovery, wherein the client regularly sends (hashed versions of) all the phone numbers from your contacts (if you've shared them with the app) to Signal's servers

If they are hashed, why do you need to trust anyone?

Re: You can change your number

#205

Post by wolverine876 »

scgtrp wrote: post #194
wolverine876 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Discord more convenient? I don't mean the question critically, but I wonder what a sophisticated user sees in Discord when Signal seems, to me, as convenient as texting and calling.

One big thing Signal is bad at for me is using from a computer. They have a desktop client, but it's just a weird thing that proxies through my phone in a sort of bizarre backwards self-hosting sort of way.

Excellent point; agreed.

Re: You can change your number

#206

Post by thaumasiotes »

iqanq wrote: post #203
godelski wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm a little upset about this. It is just set up for birthday problems. I'd be happy if it was you handing out a random string or 1-time code and then you pick a username per chat. But a global username identifier isn't anonymous (not any more than a phone number anyways) and I do not believe is a good solution.

So choose an identifier that does not... identify you. Or choose not to have a username. I assume that that will be an option, since Telegram has it as well.

No, the problem your parent is referring to is that you have the same username in every chat. Discord really suffers from this.

Re: You can change your number

#207

Post by godelski »

rcarback wrote: post #191
godelski wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this handling usernames? I understand doing this is actually hard if you want them to replace the issues that are carried with phone numbers (i.e. being able to connect with an identity through cross referencing). And of course, birthday problems.

First come first serve right now. Identity is based on keys generated on device and the usernames are based on a network service which I expect we will decentralize (i.e., set up your own like e-mail).

I also don't see usernames as really being that anonymous. Like even if I make a username there that's "notgodelski" if I share that username here on HN then I haven't done anything to keep myself anonymous. All it does is trades one PII for another (phone number for username).

I'm also curious about scaling and collisions. Not only do you have a birthday problem with normal usernames, but what about special classes? Why do I not take all "nyt" and similar usernames to honeypot the actual NYT's contact?

Re: You can change your number

#208

Post by recursive »

charcircuit wrote: post #139
recursive wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is any of this stuff more popular than actually calling people? How are people calling? Memorize phone numbers? I'm completely stumped about how someone could use a cellphone for a decade without using a contact list.

I don't even have my friends' phone numbers. If I want to call a friend I do it on my desktop using Discord. Before like 2016 we would call using Skype instead.

It's been a while since I had a friend I was regularly communicating with, so I have no idea how normal this is. But it is totally foreign to me.

Re: You can change your number

#209

Post by stavros »

tptacek wrote: post #131
gojomo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the app constantly prompts for contact-list access, Signal's software-on-device definitely has the contact list. And, that software regularly re-sends that encrypted list to Signal's servers' SGX enclaves for their contact-discovery protocol. So whether or not Signal, or some entity near/around it, "has" the contact list is a matter of how much users trust Intel™ SGX® (as well as the chain of processes that d…

I haven't kept up with what they're doing so grain of salt on this, but I think this is incorrect. What they're moving towards is a design that looks like what Apple did with their HSM quorum system. The contact information we're talking about is encrypted clientside, but with (usually) a memorable pin. Without countermeasures, memorable PINs are very easy to attack; SGX allows them to artificially limit guesses. As…

AFAIK they don't encrypt the contact list, they hash each number and send a few bits of the hash to the server. The server replies with a few possible hashes it knows about, so the client can reason that "if the hash I was asking about is in that set, the user I want to talk to has Signal installed".

Re: You can change your number

#210

Post by NullPrefix »

>If you’re getting a new phone, but keeping your old number, you can use our end-to-end encrypted device-to-device transfer on Android or iOS to carry your contacts and chat history over to your new device

Is there a way to export chat history into HTML or other file? I want to re read my chat sometime later.

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