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Signal Foundation

signal.org

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Re: Signal Foundation

#281

Post by lsc »

TuringTest wrote: post #215
lsc wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People enjoy federated networks of regulated, good faith players; wide open federated networks tend towards anarchy. Like... email and the phone system? both of those have huge amounts of bad actors and spam, and people still use them as primary means of communication. Email and phone are generally expected to be more reliable, I think, than any of the walled garden communication protocols. (Speaking of, if you have…

At least in my country, incoming call filters do wonders, in particular those which query the incoming number at an online database to show you who's the caller.

Is this something the phone company implements? or that your phone implements?

Re: Signal Foundation

#282

Post by lsc »

Kihashi wrote: post #258
TuringTest wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in my country, incoming call filters do wonders, in particular those which query the incoming number at an online database to show you who's the caller.

Not sure about elsewhere, but in the US, it is possible to spoof phone numbers. The only way to verify that the person you are talking to is actually associated with the number is to hang up and call them back. This is particularly a problem for companies like banks and insurance. Android actually does provide some amount of filtering[1], but if someone, say, spoofs a seemingly legitimate number, it will come through…

I've seen similar applications for ios, but they all seemed to want permissions I wasn't so happy to give to some rando. If apple provided the service, I'd probably be okay with it, but I'm not super comfortable feeding my entire contact list and all my call metadata to some random third party

Re: Signal Foundation

#283

Post by lsc »

jameshart wrote: post #256
lsc wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People enjoy federated networks of regulated, good faith players; wide open federated networks tend towards anarchy. Like... email and the phone system? both of those have huge amounts of bad actors and spam, and people still use them as primary means of communication. Email and phone are generally expected to be more reliable, I think, than any of the walled garden communication protocols. (Speaking of, if you have…

I'm explicitly questioning "people still use them as primary means of communication" Really? Even internal company phone systems have largely switched over to walled garden voip or videocalling systems in most places I've seen. Nobody calls anybody any more - the only use of phones I see is for dialling in to conference bridges. Email is used internally within businesses. What do people really still use public phones…

On a more personal note, I grew up using messenger protocols, icq, aim and yim. Now, I'd use a multi-protocol client, which is a little like federation, but now that doing this is inconvenient? SMS has almost entirely taken over the role of instant messaging in my life.

It's interesting, because I always felt that a SMS was way more 'urgent' than an instant message over AIM, but... most of the adults in my social circle, even those I knew from back when we all used AIM, no longer are on any instant messenger services. They have sms (often, but not always through imessage) and they have email. Then they are on their various social networks, but everyone I know checks email more often than their social network accounts.

Re: Signal Foundation

#284

Post by crtasm »

distances wrote: post #243
mapgrep wrote: post #71

This is very very good news. As a heavy Signal user, from where I sit I personally see the following clear needs: -Better group support. Right now, to do a group in Signal you have to name the group, which makes it kind of a pain to create ad hoc quick groups. I'm forever naming them "John Sue Bill" or "Jane Roger Amanda". iMessage, by contrast, just automatically makes a group without a name. You get a thread for th…

This may sound silly, but: - Stickers I know many consider those to be annoying distractions, but in my experience stickers are the reason why many "normal" users prefer Telegram over WhatsApp.

Had them for a while now on Android: attach -> gif -> stickers tab. The browser UX isn't great though.

Re: Signal Foundation

#285

Post by windexh8er »

qplex wrote: post #204
windexh8er wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficult to use? I'm even more confused as there is literally nothing to do to "add" someone. As I stated our entire family uses Signal across Android, IOS and desktop. That age range in our entire family group is 20s to 70s and I happen to be the only user who would be considered tech savvy.

Yes. We didn't have each others phone numbers in our contacts. Manually adding by phone number didn't work. At this point we just gave up. I use prepaids because I travel a lot so my mobile numbers are just throwaways. I'd rather not give _all_ of my contacts to an app anyway. So there really should be a way to manage contacts inside the Signal client and add people via screen names or email addresses.

Contact permission is only required to associate a name with a number. All you would need to do is type in a phone number and Signal would have worked.

I agree that it would be nice to have another root artifact for using signal (screen name, email, etc). The one frustrating piece about Signal is not being able to use it across mobile devices.

However it needs to be considered Signal was originally securing texts via TextSecure. It didn't, fundamentally, come up as a Slack or Telegram competitor. So that design decision may make it feel "behind" in comparison. However, I'll again state that I don't trust the others. There's no way you could force me to use FB Messenger or Google (product here). Most complaints here are fundamentally still UI/UX, not privacy. And useable privacy was the original intent. Signal has that in spades.

Re: Signal Foundation

#286

Post by RandomCSGeek »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #52

Anytime I hear about signal, I try to sign up and my verification code never comes. It may be something this simple that is holding it back from adoption.

I and a friend signed up for signal a few days ago. I received verification code after few minutes, he received it on next day. Smells like underpowered server to me.

Re: Signal Foundation

#287

Post by eadmund »

catamorphismic wrote: post #238
eadmund wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agreed on all of these (the lack of search, in particular) is just atrocious. I'd also like to see: - Improved export functionality on all platforms :: I should be able to export my chats in some readable format from any client. - More clients :: I should be able to read my Signal messages within emacs. - Support for non-phone-number identifiers :: I shouldn't need to purchase a new phone number in order t…

> There are ways to discover mutual contacts privately. Such as? I don't have the URL handy but the Signal team did investigate the literature and known techniques for this a few years ago and found them to be nonviable.

> I don't have the URL handy but the Signal team did investigate the literature and known techniques for this a few years ago and found them to be nonviable.

Private set intersection (in which two Signal users compare contact lists to see which contacts they have in common, then trade Signal information for them) would work just fine.

Re: Signal Foundation

#288

Post by ycmbntrthrwaway »

jameshart wrote: post #146
jkarneges wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think users would prefer federated systems. Who wouldn't? Even though most people have probably never heard the word before, they almost certainly use and appreciate federated systems like phones and email. Do people want federation enough to have to take a principled stance in order to force change? Heck no. And that's the problem: there's no reasonable way for their desire to impact the producer side of the marke…

“they almost certainly use and appreciate federated systems like phones and email” Two channels which have become saturated with spam and junk once the federated network starts to include players who are willing to permit bad actors to access the network in exchange for money. People enjoy federated networks of regulated, good faith players; wide open federated networks tend towards anarchy.

It does not have to be regulated by any third-party, though. Federated networks participants can regulate networks for themselves. Look at Mastodon network. If some server tolerates spamming, it will be blocked by major servers as a whole.

Re: Signal Foundation

#289

Post by newscracker »

jakebasile wrote: post #123
mapgrep wrote: post #71

This is very very good news. As a heavy Signal user, from where I sit I personally see the following clear needs: -Better group support. Right now, to do a group in Signal you have to name the group, which makes it kind of a pain to create ad hoc quick groups. I'm forever naming them "John Sue Bill" or "Jane Roger Amanda". iMessage, by contrast, just automatically makes a group without a name. You get a thread for th…

I'd love to use Signal, but in order for me to do so there's a lot that has to be added. - Real multi device support. I want my messages on all my devices, without having to have my phone on. - An iPad app. - A desktop app. I'd pay for a native one, without Electron. These things are basically table stakes for competing with Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and iMessage. If Signal's goal is to bring encryption to the ma…

...and my pet peeve (which Signal explicitly denies on iOS and has some convoluted method on Android) — allowing the user to backup data from the app and restoring it on a new or different device! Don't treat chats as disposable.

Re: Signal Foundation

#290

Post by idlewords »

skrowl wrote: post #261
tortasaur wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you really think they were talking about SSL in this context? Of course they meant E2E.

To say there's no encryption AT ALL when it's fully encrypted over the wire is still false. Not having E2E encryption is different than not having encryption AT ALL.

They are encrypted in the same sense that the Sesame Street website is encrypted.
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