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Comment by antocv | Hacker News Reader

Not only tag, but also get their identity and possibly use backdoors, because Signal is only on Google Play, which in order to access it requires a gazillion identifying data.

Signal is a joke if your adversary is NSA and its likes. You cant run Signal unless you give up who you are, and that you are using it, and its not very difficult to analyze _when_ you receiveor send a message due to the Signal requiring google messaging system.

Signal should just really rename itself to "Google Signal, no really we are not evil for certain."

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Most people only have the NSA as an adversary in the minimal sense that they're caught up in a very broad mass surveillance net. It's true that if you're a whistleblower with sensitive government information Signal is not a complete solution for you. But who cares? Almost nobody is in that situation, and people in that situation have access to other tools that actually do help.

Your last sentence is extremely unfair to Signal and dramatically underrates the privacy it provides to ordinary people. It's dangerous to suggest that because it requires a phone number and lives on an app store it provides no useful protection at all, because that implies it's no better than e.g. WhatsApp when in fact it has a much better featureset.

> Almost nobody is in that situation

Almost everybody might be in that situation, because the NSA is not the only group that has access to the data they collect. They call it "parallel construction", where the NSA's "customers" like the DEA simply have to fill out a form[1] to get surveillance data, and promise to lie about the source in court.

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140203/11143926078/paral...

LOL, its not better than WhatsApp, that is my point.

In fact, its worse than cleartext SMS, when you use Signal you are a target, when you use cleartext SMS, you can still hide among the noise.

Not everyone's threat model is nation-state adversaries. Often times it is simple theft, coercion, snooping friends/family, etc.

What messaging system would your recommend instead? Riot? Tox? Last I checked, neither were nearly as polished and feature-complete as Signal. In my use case, unless it is good enough to become a daily driver, many people won't even bother with it. What good is a messaging system that nobody else uses?

Use what the masses are using, anonymity is being in a large enough group and not distinguished enough from the rest.

Telegram, cleartext SMS, email.

Normal people do not send anonymous or secure messages, but if you need and want to, then you cant just install an app and be done with it, you have to first find and install I2P which is not traceable to you (good luck, first get a degree in information security and become Linux guru), then join an I2P only IRC channel and begin messaging with your group of people about plan to watch football and drink beer, after you had the secret communication with bitmessage over I2P.

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