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I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

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Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#101

Post by claudedopplr »

luckylion wrote: post #94
edent wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not common isn't quite right. Ofcom's report shows that SMS use is shrinking, but it is still an average of 51 messages per user per month. Source https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/222401/... SMS decline is probably inevitable though.

Wow, 51 messages _sent_ per user per month, so it's not even about receiving verification SMS. > The average mobile connection sent 51 messages per month in 2020, 17 fewer than in 2019. I'd love to know the median, I assume there's a number of power users that drives up the average. Or bots that are sending out thousands of messages a day.

"Wow"? That's two messages per day. Or just one single long conversation with somoenoe per month, like organizing a dinner and going back and forth around a subject a few times.

Wow, it's really dead.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#102

Post by jhugo »

rjzzleep wrote: post #48
jlund-molfese wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do generally pay extra for international calls, though text messaging is often free (assuming you’re talking about international states. US states, of course, are all treated as the same country). Almost all phone plans have unlimited (domestic) texting and calling and differentiate themselves with data, reliability and ”free” perks like subsidized Netflix. You really have to go out of your way to find a plan with…

It's actually mostly some parts in central Europe where texting is expensive. For most parts of the world texting is quite important. I don't understand why people on this board keep forgetting that central Europe and the US is the minority of the world population. Everyone keeps bringing up WhatsApp. But it seems that everyone has all but forgotten that WhatsApp became so popular not because they only focused on the…

The death of SMS is hardly specific to central Europe and the US. It's already thoroughly dead in most of Asia for person-to-person communication, replaced by WhatsApp/WeChat/LINE/Telegram/etc depending on country.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#103

Post by nextlevelwizard »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #93
apexalpha wrote: post #20

I think you're forgetting the main reason: the group of people using it to communicate is really small and shrinking every year. The only large group of people who still primarily use SMS to communicate person-to-person is Android users in the USA. Every other country has settled on either Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp or FB Messenger, or other niche apps. These apps work on both iOS and Android and often also Windows.…

I'm from Europe and use SMS only, I don't get it how having a dozen of messaging apps and remembering who uses what is better than a simple SMS that I can send to absolutely anyone with a phone..

Pretty much this. I only ever send out SMS if I am the one who initiates the conversation on a phone, but other people send me messages on other apps.

However most of my instant messaging is done on a computer using discord, so I might not be in the prime user base of these apps

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#104

Post by [deleted] »

bewilderbeast wrote: post #47

I have 2 issues with RCS: 1. Requires data connection, either WiFi or mobile data. SMS does not. 2. On Android, it goes through Google Messages. I don't trust Google. So, I replaced Messages with another SMS app that doesn't spy on me and disabled RCS. If I wanted to do rich messaging through data connection, I would use Signal or similar. So, RCS is not a replacement for SMS. It's just another IM protocol. And we ha…

[deleted]

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#105

Post by TacticalCoder »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #93
apexalpha wrote: post #20

I think you're forgetting the main reason: the group of people using it to communicate is really small and shrinking every year. The only large group of people who still primarily use SMS to communicate person-to-person is Android users in the USA. Every other country has settled on either Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp or FB Messenger, or other niche apps. These apps work on both iOS and Android and often also Windows.…

I'm from Europe and use SMS only, I don't get it how having a dozen of messaging apps and remembering who uses what is better than a simple SMS that I can send to absolutely anyone with a phone..

SMS is still used in France too.

> I don't get it how having a dozen of messaging apps and remembering who uses what is better than a simple SMS

Indeed, especially now that Telegram is taking off by times in Europe (in Belgium / Spain / France at least Telegram is getting used by a lot of people) and that some people now refuse to use WhatsApp.

In addition to appointment reminders from doctor/dentist/notary/whatever and delivery tracking numbers I still exchange SMS with quite some people.

It's not as if it was exactly hard to open and reply to a SMS you just received from someone: takes exactly the same time as answering using WhatsApp or Telegram.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#106

Post by lucb1e »

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #65
jbverschoor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood Telegram. It's insecure by default, runs in a different jurisdiction. It's not even anonymous But somehow people started using it because it was "more secure" than whatsapp.

> It's insecure by default Any proof? If you're calling MTProto 2.0 'insecure' then you should know it's already been audited multiple times in the last 2 years. If insecure means not using E2EE, then I guess the whole infrastructure of the internet is insecure. > It's not even anonymous It's more anonymous than Signal is. It requires phone number to register but you don't need to share a phone number or any personal…

> > It's insecure by default

> If you're calling MTProto 2.0 'insecure' then you should know [...]

If you're calling "secret chats" the default, then you should ask around or try to use telegram on desktop or just open telegram and see how much stuff is actually encrypted.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#107

Post by cookiengineer »

apexalpha wrote: post #20

I think you're forgetting the main reason: the group of people using it to communicate is really small and shrinking every year. The only large group of people who still primarily use SMS to communicate person-to-person is Android users in the USA. Every other country has settled on either Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp or FB Messenger, or other niche apps. These apps work on both iOS and Android and often also Windows.…

Don't forget 2FA from shitty European companies! And pizza delivery notifications!

Jokes aside, I see SMS as a useless protocol; because it cannot be used for identification, and neither can anything be encrypted nor verified without another communication channel.

It's also not in the power of the end user to decide whether or not their number gets reassigned, blocked, or does work at all. Most US people seem to think that it's normal to have "one" number for years on end. For the rest of the world, it's not true.

For example: If I don't use my SIM card to make phone calls (which get billed) for 6 months, it's gone and reallocated to a different person.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#108

Post by tommica »

modo_mario wrote: post #22
apexalpha wrote: post #20

I think you're forgetting the main reason: the group of people using it to communicate is really small and shrinking every year. The only large group of people who still primarily use SMS to communicate person-to-person is Android users in the USA. Every other country has settled on either Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp or FB Messenger, or other niche apps. These apps work on both iOS and Android and often also Windows.…

SMS is still rather common here in Europe. Even if a ton of people use whatsapp and such SMS is often a safe option to initiate with or something trough which you get certain kinds of automated messages like appointment reminders or verification codes.

I really hope SMS keeps on going - it's as a solid of a protocol as email is - no matter where you are, as long as there is a mobile network, you can send a text message.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#109

Post by narag »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #93
apexalpha wrote: post #20

I think you're forgetting the main reason: the group of people using it to communicate is really small and shrinking every year. The only large group of people who still primarily use SMS to communicate person-to-person is Android users in the USA. Every other country has settled on either Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp or FB Messenger, or other niche apps. These apps work on both iOS and Android and often also Windows.…

I'm from Europe and use SMS only, I don't get it how having a dozen of messaging apps and remembering who uses what is better than a simple SMS that I can send to absolutely anyone with a phone..

I guess that varies from country to country. In Spain, it's WhatsApp for everybody with Telegram recently making inroads for specific topic groups.

SMS is used by companies to send notifications and asking for confirmation, even (ouch!) banks. I haven't sent one in more than a decade.

Re: I asked Signal motivations for SMS removal

#110

Post by Semaphor »

Tor3 wrote: post #95
microtonal wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that differs very much per country. The last time I have received an SMS from a human in NL must have been a decade ago. In many European countries, sending SMS was quite expensive, leading to early and very wide adoption of WhatsApp.

It's definitely in use in Europe, but it depends. I and my wife use SMS extensively, that's simply because we both use very cheap phone plans without a built-in data plan - i.e. no internet unless we have wi-fi (the pro side of that is that the yearly phone expenses is in the (equivalent of) low tens of dollars, not hundreds of dollars). When we're networked we use Line messaging. My wife's boss communicates with all…

Huh, how cheap is that? I’m almost always in wifi range, so I got the cheapest plan I could find in Germany (4€/month, so 48€/year), and even that still includes 1 GB of data (I do need the data, to sync my shopping list for example, but I’m curious how low one can go :D).
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