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You can change your number

signal.org

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Re: You can change your number

#221

Post by haffenloher »

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.

It does not proxy through your phone. After the initial setup, you can switch off your phone and the desktop client will work just fine.

Re: You can change your number

#222

Post by grawprog »

godelski wrote: post #213
thaumasiotes wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Actually there are two main problems I'm referring to. You identified one of them. If I want to stay anonymous, I'm really asking how to compartmentalize chats and groups of people. We have different identities with different groups and use different names with them. The other problem is actually the act of sharing a username. If my username is "godelski" then yeah, I can share it on HN and Reddit where I use that us…

There's always going to be tradeoffs when you're dealing with online anonymity.

On the far anonymous end you've got 4Chan style anonymity, no permanent or any ID at all. Keeping track of individual people is nearly impossible. Conversations are chaotic and hard to follow. Pretty solid privacy.

I guess the next step up would be per conversation/thread/group whatever ID, you trade a small amount of privacy for improved conversation, privacy is still pretty good, a poor choice in username or username reuse could prove to be privacy risks.

I guess next up from that would be something like forum style usernames, like hn or reddit where it's persistent across the entire platform, but still doesn't have to be linked to anything permanent or 'real'. It increases the privacy risk again because now, your conversation history can be tracked across time. This does make it easier for more permanent connections to be made between users but does make it easier for sensitive details to be leaked depending on the user's behaviour.

Up from there you start getting into IDs that are linked to real world information about a user. This provides some pretty obvious privacy risks.

Ids linked to phone numbers are a strange case of trying to take an ephemeral ID that in todays world can change quite regularly and use it as a source of info for an ID based on real world information.

Re: You can change your number

#223

Post by kelnos »

godelski wrote: post #213
thaumasiotes wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Actually there are two main problems I'm referring to. You identified one of them. If I want to stay anonymous, I'm really asking how to compartmentalize chats and groups of people. We have different identities with different groups and use different names with them. The other problem is actually the act of sharing a username. If my username is "godelski" then yeah, I can share it on HN and Reddit where I use that us…

> Alternatively, if I have a username "not_godelski" then how do I get in contact with someone on HN while maintaining anonymity?

You can't, and I don't think that's a surprising outcome. If you have a non-anonymous identity on one platform, and link it to your anonymous identity on another, then that latter identity is no longer anonymous.

You just can't really mix your anonymous and non-anonymous worlds without de-anonymizing the latter. That's kinda a fundamental property of how anonymity works, isn't it?

Re: You can change your number

#224

Post by kelnos »

clairity wrote: post #196
godelski wrote: post #160

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). I took a poll on reddit[0][1] to see what people wanted. I was rather surprised at how many wanted strong anonymity. I expected that the top choice would be the weak anonymity, where people just have an alternative to phone numbers. But I think if that's what S…

i'd expect it to be much like imessages/facetime on apple products. it can use an email username or a telephone number. the telephone number predominates (because it also does sms/mms), but either can be used on any apple product.

I wouldn't expect that. A goal of allowing usernames will likely be to let people remain completely anonymous. Linking your Signal account to an email address doesn't work for that. Even if you create a throwaway email account somewhere, it'll often be traceable back to you somehow.

Re: You can change your number

#225

Post by godelski »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #218
godelski wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there are two main problems I'm referring to. You identified one of them. If I want to stay anonymous, I'm really asking how to compartmentalize chats and groups of people. We have different identities with different groups and use different names with them. The other problem is actually the act of sharing a username. If my username is "godelski" then yeah, I can share it on HN and Reddit where I use that us…

> There's also a third problem I don't care as much about but I'd assume Signal does. And that's naming collisions. NYT has a Signal number that allows whistleblowers to contact them. What's stopping me from creating the username NYT_Whistleblower and becoming a honeypot? That's easy; you want an internal identifier for Signal accounts that is unrelated to display name. This is already routine in most places includin…

> I don't understand how you think those two actions could be theoretically separated.

Suppose Signal generates a one-click (or even temporary) link. I can share that link that'll connect. That can accomplish the same thing as a signal.me address. Onetime links are definitely a thing. I'm sure people that know more can share even more creative ways to accomplish this. Someone has to have some fancy ZKP method for initiating contact.

> Perhaps what you want is a single buffer account

I think I covered this in my "infinite accounts" above.

> [1]

Seems to be more easily solved by letting me specify a handle at the per-chat level.

> Nothing stops you from creating the username NYT_Whistleblower, but that won't be what the NYT advertises to potential whistleblowers.

Seems you're passing the buck. Making it a "not my problem" issue and I think this is a big enough problem that it would make platforms like NYT wary of using such a system.

Re: You can change your number

#226

Post by FunnyLookinHat »

Vinnl wrote: post #2

> 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/...

I'm hoping to reclaim my ICQ number!

Re: You can change your number

#227

Post by gnud »

hndamien wrote: post #193
godelski wrote: post #160

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). I took a poll on reddit[0][1] to see what people wanted. I was rather surprised at how many wanted strong anonymity. I expected that the top choice would be the weak anonymity, where people just have an alternative to phone numbers. But I think if that's what S…

https://getsession.org/ Already does all of these.

I clicked around a bit trying to find out who creates and runs Session. And of course it's built by someone pushing a new crypto currency. That made me really really sad.

Re: You can change your number

#228

Post by godelski »

kelnos wrote: post #224
clairity wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'd expect it to be much like imessages/facetime on apple products. it can use an email username or a telephone number. the telephone number predominates (because it also does sms/mms), but either can be used on any apple product.

I wouldn't expect that. A goal of allowing usernames will likely be to let people remain completely anonymous. Linking your Signal account to an email address doesn't work for that. Even if you create a throwaway email account somewhere, it'll often be traceable back to you somehow.

> A goal of allowing usernames will likely be to let people remain completely anonymous

> Even if you create a throwaway email account somewhere, it'll often be traceable back to you somehow.

I'm surprised to hear you say this considering your completely opposite stance in response to a comment of mine. I don't see how a throwaway email is any less anonymous than a username. In fact, I see it as more anonymous since I can generate these on the fly whereas I can't do this with usernames.

Re: You can change your number

#229

Post by clairity »

kelnos wrote: post #224
clairity wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'd expect it to be much like imessages/facetime on apple products. it can use an email username or a telephone number. the telephone number predominates (because it also does sms/mms), but either can be used on any apple product.

I wouldn't expect that. A goal of allowing usernames will likely be to let people remain completely anonymous. Linking your Signal account to an email address doesn't work for that. Even if you create a throwaway email account somewhere, it'll often be traceable back to you somehow.

ah yes, i didn't mean to imply an email address specifically, just that the other username would be mostly equivalent, if slightly inferior, to the phone number.

i'm really glad that they're moving away from phone number as identity, and hopefully to fully anonymous, which they've rightly been criticized about up until this announcement.

Re: You can change your number

#230

Post by crtasm »

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #128
sgarman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I don't have a privacy issue with it per se but I have two phones, one is data only sim and I can't use signal on that device with their current model. I guess because the device is a "phone" whatever that means. If they do away with this reliance on phone numbers hopefully we could get something more flexible that allows me to use it on "phones" without phone numbers.

Did you try this? It should let you use Signal on two phones https://signal.org/blog/ios-device-transfer/

If you activate signal on another phone it deactivates the old one.
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