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You can change your number

signal.org

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Re: You can change your number

#331

Post by sneak »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #65
tapoxi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're working on usernames, but what's the privacy concern around using your phone number? Is it to be pseudononymous? My use case for Signal is friends and family, and it was easy to get everyone onboard because we all have each other's phone numbers already and didn't need to build a new list of contacts. It's a drop-in Android-compatible replacement for iMessage.

> the privacy concern around using your phone number You have to give up your anonymity to get one in many places.

You can get one from a place that doesn't do that, and use that as your Signal number for now.

Re: You can change your number

#332

Post by sneak »

ttybird2 wrote: post #118
tapoxi wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a phone number isn't supposed to be secret, it's supposed to be given to people to contact them. I don't see the nefarious use here. Can they determine I'm a Signal user? Sure, but they can get that from IP address, App/Play Store installs, etc.

Phone numbers are associated with one's real-life identity though.

Sometimes, but you can always get one that isn't for use with Signal. That's what I do.

Re: You can change your number

#333

Post by enlyth »

sneak wrote: post #330
snowgrove wrote: post #282

I stopped using Signal, along with my adult tech-oriented friends, when we all had bad experiences migrating our accounts to new phones. That plus the phone number requirement, intrusive contacts integration, and the weird crypto side projects killed my interest in Signal entirely. My friends and I use Discord now.

Discord is not end to end encrypted, and Discord, along with whoever buys them, will receive the complete plaintext message history of all of your conversations with those friends.

So some algorithm somewhere will eventually try to parse five years of shitposts and memes between me and my friends and try to figure out what it can advertise to me based on it, I can't say I'm even mad

Re: You can change your number

#334

Post by sneak »

enlyth wrote: post #333
sneak wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is not end to end encrypted, and Discord, along with whoever buys them, will receive the complete plaintext message history of all of your conversations with those friends.

So some algorithm somewhere will eventually try to parse five years of shitposts and memes between me and my friends and try to figure out what it can advertise to me based on it, I can't say I'm even mad

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

Re: You can change your number

#335

Post by pmontra »

runnerup wrote: post #299
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, but if we care about privacy isn't that an association that we need to break? Wanting to live in a society where people can have secrets ought to be reason enough to use technology that keeps yours. And then there's my mom, she's on a grandfathered mobile plan that charges her $1 every day that she sends any text messages. I got her on signal so she didn't have to pay the $1 when she texts me. She g…

Why does it need to tell everyone I have a Signal account? Adobe doesn't tell everyone that I own Photoshop. Gmail doesn't tell everyone that I have a Gmail email. PornHub doesn't tell everyone that I subscribe to their premium account. Why the fuck does Signal need to? Broadcast should be off by default, on by opt-in.

It could be as little as "everybody does it, let's do it too" or they actually thought about it. By signaling to contacts that somebody installed Signal they make it more likely that those contacts use Signal to communicate instead of any other system. It helps the growth of Signal.

Adobe and PornHub don't have the contacts list. Google likely does but maybe they are restrained by privacy laws.

Re: You can change your number

#336

Post by sa1 »

colordrops wrote: post #303
sa1 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a phone number, the contact graph can be on the phone. With usernames, the contact graph has to be stored on their servers. They were forced to store (encrypted) information on servers anyway, since client-side contact matching didn't end up scaling, which is why stuff like this and usernames are now being developed. Their new security strategy now relies on decryption being done by client-attested code on SGX e…

> With usernames, the contact graph has to be stored on their servers. Are you suggesting that there isn't a contact graph on their servers? How exactly do they route from one user to another? It's certainly not P2P. If you are suggesting that we should trust them just because it could work without them storing who I've contacted, you are mistaken. The whole point of private messaging is to obviate the need for trust…

They only started sending your contact graph after adopting SGX. Before that the matching used to happen client side through a bloom filter.

They can theoretically rebuild a contact graph by finding everyone you’re talking to, but that’s a small subset of the contact graph created by contact matching.

The code is open source and SGX literally means that the client attests that the code on the server matches what it’s expecting.

Signal might be the most audited stuff out there.

Re: You can change your number

#337

Post by zaik »

scotty79 wrote: post #67

Why would supposedly secure communicator use actual phone number as identifier is beyond me. And everybody does that, either phone number or email. The only software I could find for anonymous communication was old Polish communicator http://gg.pl which uses arbitrary numbers as identifiers I understand that startups are scared that they won't be able to build up userbase from scratch but come on! Discord and Slack d…

XMPP, IRC, Jami, Matrix, Tox and probably several others too also don't require email or phone number.

Re: You can change your number

#338

Post by berkes »

dybber wrote: post #324
mlissner wrote: post #15

This is fine, but signal still doesn't tell you when the person you're sending to has uninstalled signal. Instead, your messages go into ether and you think the person is ignoring you. It blows my mind they haven't prioritized this. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/11164

Another pain point for me: when I send an SMS to someone, I expect to get replies on SMS not on Signal. Don't try to replace SMS. It's just really annoying to have half the conversation in the text messages app and the other half in Signal app.

This is exclusive to the iOS version. Apple won't let Signal handle the SMS.

On android it easily replaces messages app and you do all messaging, SMS and signal in one chat.

Complain to Apple. Not to Signal.

Re: You can change your number

#339

Post by berkes »

enlyth wrote: post #333
sneak wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is not end to end encrypted, and Discord, along with whoever buys them, will receive the complete plaintext message history of all of your conversations with those friends.

So some algorithm somewhere will eventually try to parse five years of shitposts and memes between me and my friends and try to figure out what it can advertise to me based on it, I can't say I'm even mad

Ah, the old 'I don't need privacy because I have nothing to hide' fallacy.

Re: You can change your number

#340

Post by zaik »

gefhfffh wrote: post #272
lkxijlewlf wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the feature I want most. I have my EDC and then I have a "if I drop it in the ocean, oops" phone.

You could bridge Signal with Matrix and then use two Matrix clients. Quite a workaround, but should work ;-)

Bridges break end-to-end encryption.
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