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Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

signal.org

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Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#611

Post by sneak »

daedalus_j wrote: post #603
sneak wrote: post #454

It’s somewhat puzzling that Signal doesn’t let me donate with Mobilecoin.

Tells you how much faith they have in that "feature".... I'd love to see some usage numbers on it, and perhaps removal of it when it turns out the usage is near zero... (Or maybe I'm totally wrong, which would be interesting too!)

If they remove it, it would render several hundred dollars I have in that wallet inaccessible without extra work on my part.

Usage numbers are not possible because Signal doesn’t include spyware in the app. There is no indication which transactions on chain came from the Signal app or any other app.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#612

Post by chimeracoder »

lrvick wrote: post #598
Barrin92 wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "you don't need to trust us" you literally don't. It's a fully encrypted service. The literal purpose of encryption is to move data securely through insecure or even adversarial channels . Which you can verify, it's audited and open source. They refuse to build the app in a decentralized way because decentralization is an ideological obsession that is useless in this context, and because centralized organizations c…

Centralized supply chain, and metadata protection is anchored on SGX. They can use their pick of SGX exploits to undermine the weak metadata protections and they (or apple/google) could, if pressured, ship tweaked versions of their centrally compiled apps to select targets that use "42" as the random number generator. No one would be the wiser. Signal is a money pit with a pile of single points of failure for no reas…

> They can use their pick of SGX exploits to undermine the weak metadata protections and they (or apple/google) could, if pressured, ship tweaked versions of their centrally compiled apps to select targets that use "42" as the random number generator. No one would be the wiser.

Signal builds on Android have been reproducible for over seven years now. That's not to mention the myriad of other ways that people could detect this particular attack even without build reproducibility.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#613

Post by all2 »

devit wrote: post #610

These costs seem absurd. For instance, 1.3$ million per year for storage??? Apparently, they have 40 million users, so 1 MB per user (seems reasonable for Signal) means 40TB. You can buy a 4TB SSD for $200, which means you need $2000 one-time for 1MB per user. How they get from $2000 to 1.3$ million is a mystery. As for SMS registration, if they are spending 6 million, maybe they should find some way of doing it for…

Did they also add their cost of dev, admin, etc. into the calculation? This could have a big impact as well.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#614

Post by conductr »

benreesman wrote: post #516
conductr wrote: post #509

I'm seeing all the comments about the $6m Twilio expense, but nothing commenting on how their cost per employee is $380,000 totaling $19m. I think they could optimize this easier if the will was there. I know HN is very SV/tech centric, and that number makes sense there given the run up of VC money, etc. but I'm willing to bet they could source talent from cheaper places and slash this in half; if they wanted to. Jus…

It grinds my gears when people on a hacker forum lobby for hackers to make less. When it’s people who are running a worldwide communications network on the cheap without getting hacked all the time? Absolute pros. I don’t downvote, let alone flag, but I hate this comment.

Well I don’t get paid to hack, it’s a hobby and sometimes I’m and entrepreneur so I don’t have the same bias as thinking all devs should be making $500k+. I actually think of cost controls and how to build more with less, so kind of polar opposite motives.

Cheap is also a relative concept. I have a guy on full time that I pay $1500 a month. It’s more than twice than he’s ever made in his life and he’s an excellent dev. If I needed to, I could find 50 more like him. Sure if I was FAANG scale trying to hire 30,000 of these people it might get tough. But, I could probably create an entire training program and just apprentice people for less than they paid new grads out of 2-4 schools they normally hire from.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#615

Post by costco »

nickff wrote: post #556
illiac786 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Significantly less secure. Faking the sending number is much easier than hacking SS7 and getting SMS routed to you which are not destined to you (which is also doable but require an order of magnitude more skills and ressources in my view).

This is correct; anyone with relatively basic knowledge of VOIP can spoof any number (and CID name) they want.

I don't think ANI is spoofable in practice. But that requires a toll-free number which costs money per minute.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#616

Post by heyoni »

all2 wrote: post #613
devit wrote: post #610

These costs seem absurd. For instance, 1.3$ million per year for storage??? Apparently, they have 40 million users, so 1 MB per user (seems reasonable for Signal) means 40TB. You can buy a 4TB SSD for $200, which means you need $2000 one-time for 1MB per user. How they get from $2000 to 1.3$ million is a mystery. As for SMS registration, if they are spending 6 million, maybe they should find some way of doing it for…

Did they also add their cost of dev, admin, etc. into the calculation? This could have a big impact as well.

Yes like paying 30$ for Tylenol in a hospital. You didn’t pay that much for the pill but for a nurse to enter that you need that into a schedule and then actually deliver it to you.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#617

Post by spandrew »

devit wrote: post #610

These costs seem absurd. For instance, 1.3$ million per year for storage??? Apparently, they have 40 million users, so 1 MB per user (seems reasonable for Signal) means 40TB. You can buy a 4TB SSD for $200, which means you need $2000 one-time for 1MB per user. How they get from $2000 to 1.3$ million is a mystery. As for SMS registration, if they are spending 6 million, maybe they should find some way of doing it for…

I'm starting to suspect there's more to securely stowing user data than throwing it on a bunch of 4TB SSDs!

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#618

Post by k_bx »

devit wrote: post #610

These costs seem absurd. For instance, 1.3$ million per year for storage??? Apparently, they have 40 million users, so 1 MB per user (seems reasonable for Signal) means 40TB. You can buy a 4TB SSD for $200, which means you need $2000 one-time for 1MB per user. How they get from $2000 to 1.3$ million is a mystery. As for SMS registration, if they are spending 6 million, maybe they should find some way of doing it for…

Sorry, how does 1 mb per user seem reasonable? I’m sending tons of videos, documents and pictures, probably beyond a gigabyte daily. Just one video is like 40Mb. 1Mb assumption seems absurd

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#619

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

toast0 wrote: post #499
peanut-walrus wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you require global connectivity, managing hundreds of carrier APIs, contracts, etc seems like major overhead. Also, there are companies whose only purpose for existing is providing messaging, like Twilio, are they just...not doing this or do the carriers just not play ball? In that case, why would the carriers agree to sell to you at a discount?

Aggregators do some of this, and they can negotiate pricing to some degree, but a carrier is unlikely to intentionally give them zero cost traffic, and even if they do, they're not going to pass that through at zero cost. I ran the engineering side of carrier integrations at WhatsApp. Carriers wanted to sell data plans with special pricing for data with WA and use WA branding in advertising, because it attracted cust…

Thanks very much for sharing your experience and detail! This kind of info is what I was looking for and is super helpful.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#620

Post by ghosty141 »

devit wrote: post #610

These costs seem absurd. For instance, 1.3$ million per year for storage??? Apparently, they have 40 million users, so 1 MB per user (seems reasonable for Signal) means 40TB. You can buy a 4TB SSD for $200, which means you need $2000 one-time for 1MB per user. How they get from $2000 to 1.3$ million is a mystery. As for SMS registration, if they are spending 6 million, maybe they should find some way of doing it for…

1MB per User? People share tons of pictures and videos, I‘d guess that the average is more in the 0.5 to 2GB range.
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