Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon) • Hacker News Board

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#381

Post by guerrilla » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 7:56 PM UTC

dodgerdan wrote: post #273

Xelynega wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of thinking is exactly what's killing signal. Why would you want to gatekeep the security of others instead of making t as accessible as possible? To me this feels like signal not understanding that their intended userbase and their actual userbase are very different, as I can't imagine the number of people that use signal solely for it's e2ee is comparable to the number of people that use it as their sms a…

“Killing Signal”? They don’t publish their user numbers, but they were having outages due to massive user growth a few years ago.

That was when hundreds of thousabds of peopld abandoned WhatsApp, shi h us what will happen to Signal if they do this.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#382

Post by godelski » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 7:56 PM UTC

pavon wrote: post #72

eatwater123 wrote: post #10

This is an awful decision. I've converted some friends and family to Signal over the past years (it took a while) and it is now their default messaging app on their phones. This is going to confuse them and is going to make it difficult for me to keep convincing them that Signal is the route to use. ("Why do I need 3 apps (Android Messages, Signal, Whatsapp) to talk to people?")

I absolutely agree. Personally, I've managed to convert around 3 times as many Android users as iOS users, because of this feature. And the few people who stopped using Signal after starting using it did so because of limitations in the SMS/MMS features (fewer number of users allowed in group text, etc). I fully expect to loose 2/3 of my Signal contacts as a result of this decision, and may drop it myself if the numb…

> It also puts a spot-light on the "your phone number is your username" policy.

I'm willing to bet that this decision is just jumping the gun by a month or two since usernames are around the corner (code exists, just not enabled. Can be used if built from source).

Though I haven't had a hard time converting (Android) users by using another app. Especially people that already use WA. The "other app" just comes off as normal. Apple is a different ball game because the walled garden, but that's also the weakness because you can't send photos/videos in group chats with mixed devices (but Signal can).

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#383

Post by pitaj » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 7:56 PM UTC

CraftThatBlock wrote: post #56

This was one of the core features of using Signal for me. I wish they had implemented RCS and more features for SMS instead of removing it. I'm very disappointed with this feature. As a side note, I'm on the beta, and recently got "Signal Stories". This immensely annoyed me, and had to dig through to remove it (since it wasn't obvious). After the whole crypto thing and these decisions, it might be time to find anothe…

They can't implement RCS, because there's no Android API for it.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#384

Post by MikeKusold » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 7:56 PM UTC

Melcupa wrote: post #377

MikeKusold wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use iMessage. It's not as secure as Signal since the server has the keys, but it's the easiest way to ensure that the majority of text messages you send are encrypted. There was just an article that said that 88% of teens have an iPhone. That means that almost all of their communication is encrypted.

So when the server has the key, how can you say it's encrypted? I mean in context of signal we don't just talk about some form of transport encryption but e2e

It's various levels of encryption that are acceptable depending on your risk level.

I'm mainly concerned about SMS spoofing and mass surveillance. iMessage protects against that. The only way the government can read your messages is by serving Apple with a warrant to obtain your iCloud backup.

If I had a lower risk tolerance, I would disable iCloud backups to improve my security.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#385

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 7:57 PM UTC

adfm wrote: post #260

Waterluvian wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another reason for iOS users to avoid Signal: It eats up Gigabytes of storage space, refuses to ever clear it, and the devs are rather resistant to accepting that it's even a problem at all: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/4916

Since there’s no server storing media, consider saving the stuff you want and dumping all the old photos and video you don’t. It’s a more secure communication tool, not an archive.

Except that they make it a pain in the ass to save the stuff you want, because there isn't an easy 'export conversation' function. You can archive conversations so that old ones don't clutter up your chat list, but the only thing you can do with an archived conversation is...un-archive it. It has literally zero utility.

Your only way of saving things is to either manually save every picture and video, or manually highlight and copy the text in your conversations. The latter defeats any security arguments (other than of inconvenience) but also throws away useful information like timestamps of messages.

My Signal database takes up many GB on my phone, and it's constantly complaining about running out of space. Much of this is the years-long record of conversations with my wife. I'd like to back these up, but I can't. Are you gonna tell me that I shouldn't be using a secure messaging app to communicate with my own family members?

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#386

Post by _emacsomancer_ » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 7:57 PM UTC

oezi wrote: post #32

Why doesn't anybody fork the Signal clients? There are so many bad design decision in the clients (for instance no message backup on iOS or no way to save all media to storage automatically) that I don't understand why people accept the Signal Foundation's stewardship of the client code.

Molly[1], a fork of Signal, seems to work fine. I've used it for a long time and never had any issues with it (and it connects to Signal fine). But for security reasons one of their changes was dropping SMS, so switching to it won't do you any good there.

[1]: https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#387

Post by rodgerd » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 8:00 PM UTC

wslack wrote: post #182

CommitSyn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is an idiotic decision that makes me question the decisions being made as a whole by Signal. Does anyone have recommendations for a good default SMS app on Android?

The provide a fairly clear rationale beyond the ideological concern: users don't know/see who is on SMS and who isn't, and are being hit with high fees, and they are concerned that users may believe they have privacy when they do not. These are reasonable issues and concerns, so I don't follow why you would question all of the other decisions they make.

If only there were a company that had, at some point, demonstrated that you can use indicators such as colour to indicate to users whether their messages were being transported via SMS or an E2E secure transport layer.

I guess that's just a pipe dream though.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#388

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 8:01 PM UTC

gophin wrote: post #322

CraftThatBlock wrote: post #56

This was one of the core features of using Signal for me. I wish they had implemented RCS and more features for SMS instead of removing it. I'm very disappointed with this feature. As a side note, I'm on the beta, and recently got "Signal Stories". This immensely annoyed me, and had to dig through to remove it (since it wasn't obvious). After the whole crypto thing and these decisions, it might be time to find anothe…

Are there any Android apps that support RCS other than Google Messages? I'm not sure exactly what is exposed in the framework API regarding RCS, and how it compares to the relative ease of receiving SMS and MMS messages.

[deleted]

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#389

Post by guerrilla » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 8:01 PM UTC

throwawayben wrote: post #49

The comments here are so bizarre to me. I think this must be a USA thing. I had no idea signal even supported SMS, nor do I know anybody who uses SMS

SMS is used heavily by companies in Sweden too, for pretty much all notifications and often chat too. This is going to be a pain in the ass.

Re: Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)

#390

Post by guerrilla » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

mderazon wrote: post #244

Outside I think mostly the US, SMS is basically only used for spam and 2fa messages. I can't remember the last time I communicated with someone via SMS to be honest. To hear that people use it in group chats is mind boggling to me.

No. It's uniquitous in Europe.