131–140 of 153 posts
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Maybe ask the writers of Mr. Robot. They figured it out!
Please. I hope that's sarcasm. Because if it's not, then may I steer you clear of that annoying series and into Breaking Bad + its follow up Better Call Saul?
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What's ironic here is that in the adversarial setting the application is designed for, unexpected retention of user data (on end-user devices) is a sin.
For some of us data loss is often a bigger threat than unexpected retention. I like Signal and it always makes me happy to see more people showing up there, but for now certain group chats will stay on other messaging services.
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Honestly, the one and only feature I'm missing in Signal that would let me use it and recommend it to everyone without reservations (rather than exclusively for ephemeral-only communication) is the ability to keep identity and full message history when moving to a new device. Today, on iOS, you can't move your Signal history to a new device, and on Android you can only do so by manually making an encrypted backup fil…
I actually going in the other direction with Signal I turned on timer (1 week) for all of my conversation. Nothing stays more than a week and I do not keep any backup. It's not for security or privacy reasons. I feel like I don't need a full history of all my conversations with everyone from the beginning of time. This fits more to the real life model of having a conversation with someone. I don't record my conversat…
Since I really dislike using chatlogs, and rather not keep any (and ever since the 90ies, I never have), I really like the 1 week timer on Signal.
Very nice (seriously!). Now, please let people use the platform without needing a valid phone number. The one major issue I have is that. Phone numbers are the new SSN, just like SSN is being misused by traditional businesses, phone numbers are also misused thse days (due to how you generally can be tracked down to a physical area for antifraud and how "everyone" has a cell phone) to uniquely identify users. I don't…
What you're asking for is exactly how Telegram works, you can add someone with a phone number or by username, but if you add someone via username they don't see your phone number. Of course, Telegram chats are not encrypted by default, and there is some controversy over the encryption protocol. https://telegram.org/faq#q-if-someone-finds-me-by-username-m...
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Honestly, the one and only feature I'm missing in Signal that would let me use it and recommend it to everyone without reservations (rather than exclusively for ephemeral-only communication) is the ability to keep identity and full message history when moving to a new device. Today, on iOS, you can't move your Signal history to a new device, and on Android you can only do so by manually making an encrypted backup fil…
I actually going in the other direction with Signal I turned on timer (1 week) for all of my conversation. Nothing stays more than a week and I do not keep any backup. It's not for security or privacy reasons. I feel like I don't need a full history of all my conversations with everyone from the beginning of time. This fits more to the real life model of having a conversation with someone. I don't record my conversat…
(Not a "it works for me it should work for you", just wanted to share an anecdote :) )
Using a throwaway for obvious reasons... I am grateful these are being worked on because they are extremely needed for some use cases. I have been part of a group organizing protest in Beirut and I was surprised there was no clearly go to app that provided the security features we need. We started off with WhatSapp because that's what everyone used before security became a concern. We then moved to Signal mostly to g…
This list could be a helpful starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_cross-platform_i... You can sort the table by clicking on the column headers. The "E2EE group chat" column should be useful.
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I converted several non-technical people to Signal, and a few were devastated to learn that getting a new phone meant that they lost their message history. They refuse to use it ever again. The other sticking point is the phone number requirement. A (female) friend shared her “Signal” contact info with a professional acquaintance who doesn’t understand boundaries. After ignoring him on Signal, that led to unwanted SM…
Does this hold for backup and restore to the new phone?
There is no way to move messages from one iOS device to another (such as a new phone). My girlfriend recently got a new iPhone and wanted to transfer our Signal message history from her old iPhone onto the new one. She said it wasn't possible, and then I spent an hour or two reading about it figuring there must be some hacky awful way to accomplish it. I couldn't find one. This has been an open issue for years [0][1].
Android has an inconvenient backup flow (that involves randomly generated 30 digit PIN and manual transfer of file), but that's infinitely better than the total lack of options on iOS. I do wish Android (and iOS) had a method to download all message history to decrypted plaintext (or JSON) for use with other apps. If I own my data, decrypting it should be my choice.
I regret recommending to my girlfriend that we use Signal, and won't recommend Signal to more people after this.
[0] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/2542 [1] https://whispersystems.discoursehosting.net/t/ios-backup-kee...
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Honestly, the one and only feature I'm missing in Signal that would let me use it and recommend it to everyone without reservations (rather than exclusively for ephemeral-only communication) is the ability to keep identity and full message history when moving to a new device. Today, on iOS, you can't move your Signal history to a new device, and on Android you can only do so by manually making an encrypted backup fil…
I don't see the issue as dramatic as you do as I probably don't change my device so often. Writing down a 30-digit code once every 2-3 years isn't that hard. I assume people for whom this is too much do already use whatsapp and wouldn't switch over because they don't care about the reasons for why you have to write down this 30-digits code.
There's no way to do backup/restore with Signal on iOS.
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> There are tiers of conversation. Letters between famously literate people or during times of war have a value proposition on an entirely different scale to group chat messages. Only in retrospect. At the time, it's impossible to know. We happen to have (some of) Picasso's childhood artwork. What might it be like if we had da Vinci's and Bosch's and that of the Lascaux Caves artists? Or look at the way Pepys' diary…
> Destroying information now is expressing 100% confidence that nobody will have use for it later. Or an acknowledgement that it might have the capability to be used against you later. Would you be happy for every word you ever said, in public or private, to be recorded and transcribed and searchable just in case it becomes an "important source to historians", or just as likely "an important source of parallel recons…
Is it a coincidence this came up on HN at the same time Telegram is getting dissed on HN? Can't help but think it was coordinated...which is sad for HN