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68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

community.signalusers.org

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Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#51

Post by TaylorAlexander »

matsemann wrote: post #33
cutitout wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if a person has something important to say, calling people that don't know about the issue assholes is not a great way to go about it. I don't mind it at all. If someone uses "being called asshole" as a reason to not even inform anyone, they would have found another excuse. Some people simply register it as strong language and otherwise focus on the content. At any rate, it's very easy to judge what someone say…

> That's what we're focusing on? That's my point. By presenting the issue the way she did, people moved the conversation away from the issue and instead ended up in a meta-discussion about the discourse. If her points were laid out in a nicer manner, she would be closer to actually achieving her goal.

She did that over one year ago and was ignored. Policing her tone instead of addressing the issue that has people getting kidnapped in China is really missing the point.

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#52

Post by TaylorAlexander »

solarkraft wrote: post #46
chickenpotpie wrote: post #17

I remember a few days ago there was a post on hackernews to stop being mean to the people that worked at signal. The Twitter user linked in that article is railing into signal devs and she calls them assholes that don’t care about what happens outside of western society. https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/119769537620088012...

Naomi analyzes the technical side very well, but somehow face plants on the conclusion. Insecure IMEs exist everywhere and affect every app. Not just Signal, not just in China. This is the operating system's job to tackle, not Signal's. And oh wonder: Android displays a scary reminder when you install an IME (of course they could and should disallow network access for IMEs as well). Signal should show a reminder to h…

I think Naomi wants at least a clear recognition of the issue from signal. All of us on HN can say “well yeah that’s obvious” but signal keeps telling everyone their app is “secure” without caveats that your keyboard could be leaking everything you type, making the system not secure. Saying “well that’s not my department” isn’t acceptable when people are being put at real risk here.

EDIT: The specific request in TFA is to detect users using a third party IME and give them a security warning. Seems pretty reasonable.

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#54

Post by schnitzorg »

solarkraft wrote: post #30

I'll file this under "security tips". Signal should probably give its users tips for communicating securely - but that's at least one degree separate from "warn users about insecure IMEs". Additionally, if you're already using a chinese phone, why does it matter whether your IME is compromised? Doesn't the CCP already have its nose in all of the manufacturers' OSes already? Maybe Signal should warn about that as well…

What normally happens in china:

  1. Install signal app
  2. Signal app connects to thoughtcrime.org server (really!)
  3. Get invited for questioning by the authorities regarding your thought crimes.
IMHO Signal is not suitable for users in china, IME or no IME.

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#55

Post by jstanley »

beervirus wrote: post #50
jstanley wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn't the CCP already have its nose in all of the manufacturers' OSes already? What specifically are you saying here? Are you suggesting that every Chinese person's phone is sending off their keyboard inputs to the Chinese government even if they don't use a compromised IME? Because if not, then yes it matters whether or not your IME is compromised. Otherwise your position is just "the phone might be compromised…

I would assume that any phone purchased in China is compromised by the CCP.

In what way though? Are you arguing that people should just ignore security vulnerabilities that they are aware of, on the basis that you think there might be some vulnerabilities that they're not aware of?

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#56

Post by jackjeff »

tracyhenry wrote: post #28

"many of them use Signal" - where is this conclusion come from? They have WeChat. I've never seen any of my Chinese friends using Signal.

When Donald Trump threatened to block WeChat in the US expats and Chinese people alike started to download Signal.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/trump-bans-wechat-some...

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#57

Post by bllguo »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #48
matsemann wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if a person has something important to say, calling people that don't know about the issue assholes is not a great way to go about it. I know there is a western, and especially US/English, bias in tech. But it's not like everyone tries to annoy others, it's more an issue of ignorance. Btw I agree that when Signal says your messages are secure, it should probably do something to warn about ways things still may le…

She has been ignored for over a year (she tried to get them to discuss the issue in 2019), and all the while people have been getting kidnapped by the Chinese government due to this misunderstanding. I can understand why she would feel upset. I think what set this off was signal responding to questions to some tiny Twitter account after ignoring her for so long.

Can you substantiate this claim? Or is this just "I know someone who was arrested, it had to be the keyboard"?

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#58

Post by novok »

yorwba wrote: post #12
novok wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The side effects of chinese not adopting a phonographic writing system when it could, or having both like japanese does so you don’t need to use such an informal ambiguous layer when actually writing.

Japanese IMEs operate basically the same way as Chinese ones.

But native OS IMEs in japan are used frequently, while in China they are not? From what I understand hiragana -> kanji conversions are formalized and thus are easy to add by dumping a dictionary, while in chinese since the phonography is informal you need to do more effort to maintain the dictionary, as everyone ends up typing in whatever they thing they think it would be in pinyin or similar AFAIK, along with all the dialectal variations.

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#59

Post by angry_octet »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #48
matsemann wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if a person has something important to say, calling people that don't know about the issue assholes is not a great way to go about it. I know there is a western, and especially US/English, bias in tech. But it's not like everyone tries to annoy others, it's more an issue of ignorance. Btw I agree that when Signal says your messages are secure, it should probably do something to warn about ways things still may le…

She has been ignored for over a year (she tried to get them to discuss the issue in 2019), and all the while people have been getting kidnapped by the Chinese government due to this misunderstanding. I can understand why she would feel upset. I think what set this off was signal responding to questions to some tiny Twitter account after ignoring her for so long.

It is an extreme exageration to say that the Chinese state artitrarily detaining people is due to Signal not working around the IME issue.

Let's be clear: the Chinese state detains people all the time, based on many sources of information, probably the least important being interception of keystrokes to Signal in an input method app. They own all the app makers and the app stores. They can push a specific version of an app to a specific person. Frankly it is meaningless to rely on Signal on a device like that.

The OWS team is small. They don't have a social media team like big corps do, tracking social issue engagement, what big accounts have tweeted etc, and it is ridiculous and counter-productive to be going off about it.

Re: 68.3% of people in China use third-party keyboards – many of them use Signal

#60

Post by TaylorAlexander »

bllguo wrote: post #57
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She has been ignored for over a year (she tried to get them to discuss the issue in 2019), and all the while people have been getting kidnapped by the Chinese government due to this misunderstanding. I can understand why she would feel upset. I think what set this off was signal responding to questions to some tiny Twitter account after ignoring her for so long.

Can you substantiate this claim? Or is this just "I know someone who was arrested, it had to be the keyboard"?

This was Naomi Wu’s claim. She herself has been “taken away for questioning” by the Chinese government (and she shared photos of it) so I have no reason to distrust her claims.
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