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Signal commit Username Integration Test

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Re: Signal commit Username Integration Test

#71
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is not only used for porn and piracy. In fact there's much better places to get those things. I just use it to follow events at clubs in interested in. There's a bit of an overlap with Instagram but I find the telegram experience nicer. Less ads, no stupid 'reels' forced upon me.

Yeah, I'm sure there is even some guy out there who talks to his grandmother using Telegram.

It depends on the country. In Russia many people use Telegram for work and for personal communication (almost every young person has it so you cannot say it is used mainly by criminals unless you count everyone as a criminal). Telegram also has channels, so you can for example read news or (if you are young enough) funny memes there. Also, Telegram is uncensored unlike web, so you can watch videos with exploding tanks if you are into this kind of stuff. But at the same time in Japan it has a negative image of an app used for shady things.

Re: Signal commit Username Integration Test

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal will still require a phone number for registration. You will be able to hide your phone number and use a username instead.

Crap, I wish I could use it without a phone number altogether. I was hoping this would be the case. It's the problem with telegram too, you can show a username but you must still have a phone number. Matrix does this really well though. So I use that a lot. Unfortunately not many people do.

> Crap, I wish I could use it without a phone number altogether.

Me too, I wonder if it's a technical difficulty/limitation or just a business decision.

Re: Signal commit Username Integration Test

#73
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is not only used for porn and piracy. In fact there's much better places to get those things. I just use it to follow events at clubs in interested in. There's a bit of an overlap with Instagram but I find the telegram experience nicer. Less ads, no stupid 'reels' forced upon me.

Yeah, I'm sure there is even some guy out there who talks to his grandmother using Telegram.

Maybe this is a US thing? I heard messaging apps are wildly different in the US. For example nobody uses iMessage here (Spain), literally nobody, not even people with iPhones. Which are admittedly very few people because they are so expensive here. Most people use budget android phones like $150 redmi's. I never get SMS either, only system/bank/2FA notifications. If someone SMSed me I would tell them to use something else because it would cost me money to reply :P

Here it's WhatsApp for 1:1 and small groups, and telegram for big public groups because WhatsApp sucks for those. I (and most of my friends!) even use WhatsApp for making calls these days. The only time I make a legacy phone call is to call a business that doesn't have WhatsApp. 95% of the calls I receive are spam harrassment so I ignore calls unless I know the number.

But Telegram is quite common for normal use to follow clubs, to follow tattoo artists, to get notifications of stock of Nvidia cards, for cybersecurity information, for our makerspace.. We really use it a shitload.

I don't use telegram for porn or piracy at all. Nor do I know anyone that does. Even though I do those things a lot, but I have much better places for it.

But perhaps in the US it's used very differently? I don't know. Here it's really quite mainstream.

Re: Signal commit Username Integration Test

#74
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friends on Signal do, but I have no idea how widespread it is across their whole userbase. It's not as in-your-face as Instagram, which is actually kind of nice, but like it's being said - signal is social media. you can choose to not use that feature but that's on you. To look at you and your friend group and extrapolate from there is not science, or data driven. the plural of anecdote is not data. It's like sayi…

I disabled that feature as soon as it appeared (the less I use a messaging app, the best it is) and forgot about it. Your comment makes me curious: I do really wonder how this feature is used. Signal announced it was really something users were looking for. I wonder if it was a weak attempt at convincing the Instagram crowd or if it is really popular with some population. In the end, I’m still angry that they removed…

> Your comment makes me curious: I do really wonder how this feature is used.

This is why I don't begrudge sending telemetry for how I'm using software. As a developer myself, I really want to know if the code I'm writing is at all appreciated or if I'm just coding into the void, so I'm happy to send stats on how some one else's software is getting used.

Re: Signal commit Username Integration Test

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crap, I wish I could use it without a phone number altogether. I was hoping this would be the case. It's the problem with telegram too, you can show a username but you must still have a phone number. Matrix does this really well though. So I use that a lot. Unfortunately not many people do.

Session [0] is an up and coming, open source E2EE messenger that doesn't rely on phone numbers (and doesn't require them). It also routes messages through Tor. It's fast and reliable, and I always get notifications on time. It has some disadvantages though, depending on how you use it. Your ID is a 66 character long hexadecimal hash instead of a classic username. Another disadvantage I've found is the paltry 10 MB at…

That hash thing alone pretty much guarantees it will remain a geek thing unfortunately :(

Re: Signal commit Username Integration Test

#76
post #25

I really hope this eventually leads to a situation where an adversary cant forcibly de-link you from your signal account by taking control of your phone number or intercepting an sms.

Doesn't the registration lock feature resolve this?

Nope. "If Alice registers number X and enables reglock, but Bob later proves ownership of number X (by registering and completing the SMS code), then Alice will be unregistered."

IE, if somone intercepts the SMS code, even with reglock, you can forcibly de-register somone. This means if you use loose access to your phone number, you can easily loose access to your signal account.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/12595#iss...

They justify this by saying "The intention of reglock is to prevent hijacking of numbers you actually own, not to guarantee the number for yourself for life", but its way to easy for activists and dissidents to lose ownership (temperately or permanently) of phone numbers for the phone number system to be the backbone identity system for a secure messaging platform

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