> This is either a reason you love Signal (raises hand) or can't stand Signal.
Eh? Why either or? (and why are there people who can't stand it?)
Eh? Why either or? (and why are there people who can't stand it?)
Signal forces users to use phone numbers; some people don't like this because they want to use multiple ephemeral usernames so they can be 'Joe' to friends, 'kleptoclown' to their github group, 'dungeonmaster42' to their DND group, 'joesolutioner' to anyone who browses their personal website or business card, etc. that way they are not having to give out the phone number to strangers which represents Sim-jacking and spam risks.
If you create a signal group and invite folks to it, you cannot remove members from the group (this is being worked on now) without them clicking the 'leave' button or creating an entire new group sans whoever needs to go, which causes loss of group history.
Signal cannot have multiple mobile clients, only one mobile client and a single desktop version. WhatsApp Riot etc. all support clients in as many spots as you can login from.
Again -> these are focused nitpicks, but in most cases Signal is much better for upholding the promise of 'you send someone a message and you have a reasonable sense that ONLY THEY will be able to read it' compared to the likes of Line/WhatsApp/FB messenger etc.
What's hopeful in all this is that Signal is, slowly, catching up. Slack can roll out new features just by assigning a couple developers to it, and Signal has to coordinate new cryptographic research --- not just new cryptographic research, but research that produces something deployable at scale within the resources of a project like Signal! --- so Slack (and Wire and Keybase) are at a permanent advantage here.
But over time, Signal gets more and more usable without having to consider tradeoffs.
So you consider accounts not tied to a phone number "Slack ergonomics"? Before WhatsApp that was the default.
Thomas Ptacek is a big Signal advocate, as am I, but he doesn't like to think of it as a drop-in replacement for texting, whereas I do (because that's what it is and where it shines). I move texting onto Signal whenever I can.
Not saying Keybase is better; no dog in that fight, just curious if you had considered it.
I have some friends I talk to in Signal groups. I have others I talk to in Slack. In both cases, the goal is the same: communicate privately with a known group of friends.
"[Signal is] really an engine for revealing people's true preferences for messaging, which, for many people, tend to be that they want all the ergonomics of Slack a lot more than they want cryptographically sound secure messaging."
This comparison to Slack makes no sense - Signal replaces texts and makes them end-to-end encrypted. It's a straight upgrade to texting (except, apparently, on iphone, where apple won't let the app send plain old texts and the "drop-in replacement" quality is neutered). It requires a phone number to use, and is linked to that phone number.
Signal is right to be what it is, and if Apple got out of the way, I would insist on replacing all texts with Signal. Replacing my Slacks with Signal or my Signal messages with Slack fails to type-check.
People do literally compare them when deciding what group messaging app to use: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21746863
For people like that, end-to-end cryptographic security is at best a nice-to-have. And I'd guess that's circa 90% of people.
Signal's true value comes when lots of people are using it. I never bother with secure email, because almost nobody I know has it set up. But I use Signal for the great bulk of my texting, because most of my friends are on it. If Signal wants that to be more and more true, they have to compete with the other tools people use for group communication.
Signal's rationale is that if we actually secure this type of conversation, we can tell people not to accept insecure conversations because they're trading something you might want (actual privacy) for... not very much.
We've been here before on the Internet, at least twice now. When I was still (barely) a teenager Tatu Ylönen invented SSH and connecting to another machine was now secure instead of hopelessly insecure. And at almost the same time a bunch of people at Netscape invented SSL (which became TLS) and made the World Wide Web secure. It only took a few years for ordinary (relatively) people to _expect_ SSH not telnet and it took a bit longer for HTTPS but in both cases we got to a place where secure was the default and expected condition.
If Signal wants to be broadly successful, they have to be as good from the perspective of the broad base of users.
This loss of user data is not advertised well enough up front, and leaves users feeling tricked. In many contexts loss of user data is an even bigger sin than weak security.
I can see how this makes sense for journalists, dissidents, diplomats, criminals, corporate executives, etc., but if data is under threat of disappearance, regular people should be warned away and told to use something else for day-to-day communication.
I like Signal and it always makes me happy to see more people showing up there, but for now certain group chats will stay on other messaging services.
Needing to say I have a new phone just trust me largely defeats the purpose.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...
No dice for iOS unfortunately.
In this respect a keybase like model makes more sense to me.
This is different from whether other users are told that my security keys just changed.
In some cases, an ability to have multiple independent accounts/identities (pseudonymity) would - unfortunately but practically - beat true cryptographic security that Signal offers. I mean, personally, I'm less concerned about platform (e.g. Wire or Whatsapp) or some government agency learning that I'm talking to my buddies at certain schedule, than mixing up my acquaintances from different groups together, having to maintain a single identity for them all. Some people I talked with didn't knew my name or phone number, and I would be uncomfortable if they would. For me, in my life I've said less things I wouldn't want governments to learn about, than times I've used a pseudonym/throwaway account to talk to people.
Which is number one reason why I'm not even considering it
"some people don't like this because they want to use multiple ephemeral usernames"
That's not my reason: I don't want people I don't know to get my phone number through other people I know and trust, but are used to share everything online. Of course that would be possible without any social application as well, though using one makes it much more natural.
Then this one from their site: "Multiple mobile devices and Android tablets are not currently supported"
Triple facepalm here: this makes it even worse than Whatsapp I use (read: am forced to use) on an old tablet. Whatsapp sucks badly just at everything (didn't I write I'm forced to use it?) but at least I can read what I write.
Downvotes welcome, though advice on secure+open alternatives that don't assume I have a smartphone (I haven't one and don't plan to) would be more informative.
Maybe this is because of the social expectations of that it will work without such overhead but I just simply can't notice how all the "countermeasures" phone industry (and governments as this is a heavily regulated industry) are ignorance to elephant in the room...
This is wrong. You could always have multiple desktop clients. You can also add iPads as linked clients now. Personally, I have two desktops and an iPad linked to Signal.
WhatsApp doesn’t support linked devices at all, the web client connects through your phone. Signals linked devices function independently, you can power off your phone and they’ll still work.
Here is a story what has happened to Doubi (SSr developer.) He was a very well aware of anonymity risks, and he evaded police for years on end. China literally tried to do geolocate him by turning off the internet in entire cities, but to no result — he caught on to that, and started randomising his release timing, and avoiding releasing "hotfixes". So, the entire Chinese police and MSS been looking him for 4-5 years.
What has happened? A few month before his arrest, he registered a Twitter handle with a throwaway SIM card. Those are being usually sold by "grannies" in Chinese 2nd tier cities who peddle things like fake tax receipts, anonymous train tickets and such.
China either hacked Twitter, or had somebody bribed there, and they got the number. They then tracked down the granny who sold him the SIM card, and went on and checking every person door to door in that small town. Then, they found him.
He got 5 years prison, and 4 years of laogai (gulag)
Am I missing something? Or am I misinterpreting your story? You're saying that sign up bound to a Sim card is bad for Twitter and bad (worse) for signal?
Here is what Doubi's online followers figured:
State security got all phone numbers used for Twitter phone verification up to May 2019 and possibly till July.
Twitter haphazardly closed the breach in complete secrecy.
API hole explanation is excluded as people with 100% private accs got police visits.
People with foreign SIM cards also got into trouble. So the explanation that China compromised Twitter's SMS providers is also excluded, as its improbable that they did it in 4+ countries.
2016 breach is also out of question.
The only explanation is that they got hold on a big piece of their user DB, or, worse, they have an active infiltrator in Twitter, or Twitter voluntarily cooperated.
https://mobile.twitter.com/robert_spalding/status/1134797195...
https://amp.ft.com/content/afd44222-5c34-11e9-9dde-7aedca0a0...
Not even doubting it, just wondering if there's more of a source that's laid out (work/timeline/etc)? It's supremely interesting and should probably be more well known if it's not already.
Early accounts explored the possibility of Chinese police exploiting SMS gateway, and password reset abuse, but it has since been confirmed that even users who lived for years in the West got deanonymised, and their relatives got harassed. MSS/police having fresh twitter user DB is the most probable explanation at this point.
You are right about the mobile client, but that's not true of desktop. I have Signal installed and setup on every desktop/laptop that I use without any issue.
It's OK in my books: a symptom of there being no server to step in and enforce a universal truth. You just have to understand what you're getting in exchange for the occasional inconveniences.
But the sometimes uncritical love people have for it doesn't help when it has issues.
The main categories of people I've encountered who aren't absolute Signal fans are:
* People who don't want to give out their phone number to random men.
* People who weren't impressed by Signal's security issues coming up at the same time that it was being pushed as the replacement for GPG.