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Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

signal.org

701–710 of 965 posts

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#701
post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess maybe I'm missing the purported point of signal, attaching your phone number to use it notwithstanding, but attaching payment identity to it as well? Like, what's the point of going through the pain required to use it?

> I guess maybe I'm missing the purported point of signal, attaching your phone number to use it notwithstanding, but attaching payment identity to it as well? Like, what's the point of going through the pain required to use it? Your payment info is not connected to your account. https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360031949872-Do...

The suggestion here is to use your iPhone to pay through Apple Pay.

Does Apple have any records connecting your recurring Apple Pay payment to your iPhone's phone number?

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#702
I lost interest in Signal when they started shilling a cryptocurrency that they had invested in. I really want a trustworthy replacement to Whatsapp but if I'm going to shill an app to people I know, it can't be something that has connections to investment fraud.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#703
post #2

> Storage: $1.3 million dollars per year. > Servers: $2.9 million dollars per year. > Registration Fees: $6 million dollars per year. > Total Bandwidth: $2.8 million dollars per year. > Additional Services: $700,000 dollars per year. Signal pays more for delivering verification SMS during sign-up, than for all other infrastructure (except traffic) combined. Wow, that sounds excessive.

Signal agrees: (from the article:) ... legacy telecom operators have realized that SMS messages are now used primarily for app registration and two-factor authentication in many places, as people switch to calling and texting services that rely on network data. In response to increased verification traffic from apps like Signal, and decreased SMS revenue from their own customers, these service providers have signific…

> In response to increased verification traffic from apps like Signal, and decreased SMS revenue from their own customers, these service providers have significantly raised their SMS rates in many locations, assuming (correctly) that tech companies will have to pay anyway.

There's nothing that requires tech companies to use SMS for registration or for 2FA. The normal way to do it is by email, which continues to be free. For Signal, there is no need to do 2FA registration at all.

Signal is ideologically committed to publicizing your phone number, and apparently they'd rather pay $6 million to hold to their commitment than just... not do that.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#704

I'd prefer a federated solution, but XMPP doesn't yet have decent support for group chat that doesn't depend on being connected. https://xmpp.org/extensions/attic/xep-0369-0.1.html is still experimental. Bravo to Signal for being easy enough for my family to use!

What about Matrix?

I've tried a few times. It always felt... clunky?

I tried Element. UI felt slow, I was unable to find notifications in scrollback. Clicking the notification button would take me to random messages.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just don't use it, don't generate cost for them, don't be trapped by them. Everyone wins.

The 50 million using them all lose because they are locked into a monopolistic platform.

Nobody is locked into Signal. It's free to use, and free to leave.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federation can only make security worse and I do not want it. You can have something else.

Genuine question: Does Tor fall under the definition of federation? Either way, a Tor-like model would have security benefits over a centralized system like Signal, right?

Tor is distributed, not federated. And it has drawbacks, like high latency and a lack of a centralized system for human-friendly names (because that would mean a system like DNS, which is centralized). As far as security goes, there's probably little benefit. E2EE doesn't get more secure because there's more encryption.

The most comparable system to Tor that has practical properties I can think of is maybe ipfs, but nobody will store your encrypted chat blobs for you out of the goodness of their hearts. Ipfs also tends to have high latency. A slow system of uncooperative nodes isn't what you want your messaging app built on.

A federated messaging system looks a lot more like Matrix. The obvious problems are that splitting users up over multiple nodes mean encrypted data doesn't live on your instance, it lives everywhere the people are you chat with. Another problem is what you see with bsky, where identifiers come with a domain name (like an email).

IRC is also federated (sort of), and there's a long list of tired, age-old problems. The most common one is simple: different servers have different features, so you can't reliably "just use it" like you can with Signal.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#707

Didn't they do some sort of cryptocurrency thing. How is that going? edit: it was called MobileCoin right edit2: they do https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In... is that generating any revenue?

I have held off donating to signal so far exactly because there is no clarity around this token, why it was even added to signal and who profited from that.

Yeah how can I trust the security of an app which is engaging in potential financial fraud. Like ffs, if your whole thing is trust and principles, don't start fucking around with things for personal financial gain.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know much does it become worth it to build your own? They spend around $3-4m on storage and bandwidth

Data centers cost billions. Signal, and pretty much everyone else who isn't already in the data center business, is far away from breakeven on that.

You don't have to buy a data centre... You can lease space in an existing facility for almost nothing.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#709

I lost interest in Signal when they started shilling a cryptocurrency that they had invested in. I really want a trustworthy replacement to Whatsapp but if I'm going to shill an app to people I know, it can't be something that has connections to investment fraud.

I would say that is the only mistake they have done during their existence.

Re: Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive

#710
2022 Salaries for those interested: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824...

Compensation Key Employees and Officers Base Related Other

Jim O'leary (Vp, Engineering) $666,909 $0 $33,343

Ehren Kret (Chief Technology Officer) $665,909 $0 $8,557

Aruna Harder (Chief Operating Officer) $444,606 $0 $20,500

Graeme Connell (Software Developer) $444,606 $0 $35,208

Greyson Parrelli (Software Developer) $422,972 $0 $35,668

Jonathan Chambers (Software Developer) $420,595 $0 $28,346

Meredith Whittaker (Director / Pres Of Signal Messenger) $191,229 $0 $6,032

Moxie Marlinspike (Dir / Ceo Of Sig Msgr Through 2/2022) $80,567 $0 $1,104

Brian Acton (Pres/Sec/Tr/Ceo Sig Msgr As Of 2/2022) $0 $0 $0

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