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- Hacker News
- So finally a basic feature they should have had at the outset, and as a paid option? I'm left wondering if they just purchase a SIP DID in the background, solely to allocate a phone number lolol.
I can't argue that Signal adoption rate hasn't been fantastic, but the paternalistic "opinionated" crypto has always rubbed me the wrong way. I remember the initial announcement claiming that binding themselves to Google Play was "more secure" because it would lead to more adoption. This is of course patently absurd when Google is one of your primary threat actors.
My "mobile phone" is not the center of my digital existence, and never will be. When I am home I leave it by the door, and use different devices - desktop, laptop, and a different pocket device for photos, afk, messaging, yardwork music, etc. So similarly, this argument that Signal is super sekoor by relying on treacherous hardware enclaves etc just falls super flat. If I'm not able to choose between competing open clients for each of my use cases, then I will always consider your system as a proprietary nuisance that I just need to mitigate my exposure to and cope with otherwise.
by mindslight - Opinionated is good. It means everyone gets the same predictable experience and it's easy to set up. On the opposite end of the spectrum you'd have something like IRC, which nobody uses because it's so hard to get started.by inigyou
- Lots of ranting here. Signal is a WhatsApp alternative. That's it. No money to Meta which is at the end of the day just an arm of American imperialism.
If you want privacy you shouldn't use the internet at all.
by expedition32 - >If you want privacy you shouldn't use the internet at all.
Signal messaging between two iPhone users is more or similarly private and secure communication compared to what governments use.
by Cider9986 - Maybe I'd pay $2 for this.by drewbitt
- I don’t understand the FUD and negativity I see about Signal on platforms like this. I’m not gonna argue that they are perfect but of all organizations involved in secure messaging I trust them the most. Their CEO appears sincere in her conviction for privacy and I see no reason to not trust them, at least to the extent you can trust any third party. And yet people seem to nitpick certain aspects of what they build with a level of criticality that is seemingly never applied to the alternatives. It seems like suspicious criticism.
But it’s a smart technique eh? Signal is not literally perfect across every dimension. Might as well use the totally insecure alternative that governments have backdoored amirite?
by slopinthebag - There's a lot of astroturfing and psyops that work against that want any efforts in these areas to "vibe" negativelyby sylos
- Will they accept Monero?
- > Signal Login, one-time payment, price unknown
Of course price is unknown, because it doesn’t matter, what matters is linking your real identity to signal. As I mentioned before, many times, that the main purpose of the phone requirement isn’t to fight “spam”, is to fight privacy and always have the option to expose the real person behind that account whenever needed. Most countries around the world require an ID to be issued a new phone number, rest will require payment of any sort to activate it, not to mention the ability to accurately track someone’s location only knowing their phone number, which is why it’s still used almost anywhere online as an ID, sometimes as “2FA” too, is to find you with little recourses whenever needed, and Canada now are having a unified single “login portal” for anything government wise, and as you guessed, the 2FA is only a phone number!
So Signal will try to fool some privacy conscious people with the “no phone number required anymore, we are private, woohoo!!” While linking your whole payment and KYC to that account. Hard pass.
by tamimio - > is to fight privacy and always have the option to expose the real person behind that account whenever needed
This post is FUD. Signal is about privacy. Nowhere do they mention anonymity as a goal of their messenger. They don't sacrifice contact privacy by using sealed sender (trustless) and by not keeping metadata (trust required that the server isn't malicious but proven in legal documents).
It barely would help an investigation to know the identity of a Signal account. All they disclose is the account creation time [1] when handed a court order.
by Cider9986 - This is why as a security engineer and researcher even I do not have a Signal account. My conversation with Moxie about Signal convinced me that Signal cannot be trusted as they are obsessed with centralized control and user tracking, via app store stats. Privacy assurances come from enclaves internet randos can freely manipulate as they chose not to implement full source bootstrapped remote attestation. Also relying on app stores that can, with a court order, ship anyone an extra special fork of signal with compromised encryption, and they will never know. But F-Droid with independent control and reproducible builds? Unacceptable to Signal. Their stance is use proprietary partner platforms with their centralized servers so you can be tracked and backdoored at any time or GTFO.
Centralized comms that force you to identify yourself and use proprietary software are an enemy of a free society.
I do not understand the true goals of Signal, but their actions are inconsistent with their stated ones.
This is not even getting started on their Mobilecoin premine scam that was a blatant conflict of interest and a wildly blatant violation of their non-profit charter given Moxies financial ties to Mobilecoin.
by lrvick - If this works without proprietary software, it might actually convince me to use Signal.
I already have a VoIP phone number through JMP and would be happy to use it for Signal, but I've read that registration isn't an option on the desktop client, even if I also have a phone number. I looked for a fork or alternate compatible client that allows registration but didn't find one.
- It's an absolute pain, but you can use signal-cli to do it (or at least you could a few months ago when I did). Just an FYI if you ever have time to burn.
- My advice is not to use any service which claims to be focused on privacy if they fail to update their privacy policy after even introducing major changes that would impact it such as moving your data into the cloud.
Signal's privacy policy says "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." but that hasn't been true for a long time now. They just refuse to update their policy; maybe that's them trying to warn people away from the service as loudly as they can.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230519120156/https://community...
by autoexec - Are they going to let you create bots now then? I'd love to organize me and my friend's dinner group using a bot that reads and responds to messages and pins something.by HaloZero
- > The ability to register for Signal without a phone number is a frequently requested feature.
I wonder if Signal missed the forest for the trees with a paid registration. I imagine privacy is the primary reason for registering without phone number and yet they ask one to register by giving them money which 99% of the case involves means of payment tied even tighter to one's identity than a phone number.
by tomkarho - Signal is private with a phone number for the purpose it serves. Its does not aim to be an anonymous chat service. For 99% of people Signal is ideal for private communication and we should not spread FUD about it not being private because you need a phone number.by Yukonv
- I would bet that the overwhelming majority of folks trying to use Signal without a phone number are on devices that aren't phones and where the user doesn't want to use their phone. For instance:
- Folks running businesses without a business phone number
- People who want to give their kids the ability to text them, but their kids only have an iPad
- People who want to give texting capabilities to bots without having their own phone number involved
by bastawhiz - It might be done so that it only gives you a "ticket" to create an account, but they will not know what account was created.by deepsun