Encrypt Your Face: Signal Messenger | Hacker News Reader

Encrypt Your Face: Signal Messenger

signal.org

82 pointsjayp141831 comments

Signal does weird stuff sometimes. For a while it has been bugging me to add a last name with the only options are either to add one or to “remind me later.” And they of course never forget to remind you again and again, week in and week out. Until I eventually succumb and add one I guess?

Not sure what their angle is.

Just lie? Be “Steven X”, or “Steven DotCom”, or something. If your contacts wont be too confused, use a fake real last name like “Steven Neiderhoffer”.

I lie about any personal information I can online, thought that was SOP these days. Taint your data.

I actually have a particular use case for not adding one - as a running joke I changed my Signal name to the screen name of a buddy that went AWOL. Adding a last name doesn’t work in this model.

So it’s not just about not wanting to share information, but it ruins a joke in the group chat I primarily use Signal for :/

To top it off, it specifically says it’s optional. But you get reminded every week to add one... but it’s totally optional.

As a possible extension to the "real fake" names, may I suggest some derivative of "P. A. Chapeau"? There is method to my madness as this name in particular is a pun on the french for "tinfoil hat" (that is, "papier aluminium chapeau", or more accurately "chapeau de papier d'aluminium").

If you’re on GitHub, raise an issue about this and point them to “Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names” [1]. They could use at least some lessons from it.

[1]: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

Hmm, I just got around to reading this tab after opening it several hours ago and can't help but feel like this guy is overthinking this way too much. If a person wants to have a first/last name structure in their app/db, fine, let him. Make one of the names optional in the database and only fill it when the submitted data looks like a first/last name structure. Add properties to your model to return whatever you need to display.

Some of the things in his list sound like particularly interesting stories, like why he's talking about when a person's name is assigned at birth or 5 years later (what piece of code needs to reference that? why would an app ever need to know that unless it's checking if a person has ever changed their name?

Any programmer who can tie his own shoes will know names aren't unique. Ever. Most of the rest of them just make me wonder "why would that ever be an issue???". And oddly, several of them make me think of "hmm, that reminds me of that bug X..." scenarios, none of which were problems with naming, just general programming bug scenarios like forgetting a database comparison on your DB of choice isn't case-sensitive, things like that.

Some of them are definitely here to fill the list, but some problems are alive and well. The Scunthorpe problem. Indonesian single names. My friend whom Windows made a home directory based on his name, with an "Ł", and many apps can't handle it.

But yeah, it'd be way better if the author gave specific examples of problems, instead of inflating the list with shocking revelations like there's more than one John Smith.

It is a strange move for a company that takes user data and privacy so seriously to require last name in their user model. I've been using Telegram sometimes with friends and also found it weird how incredibly difficult it is to find where to enter a username in the app to add someone, instead of their phone number. I thought it was supposed to be a super secure messenger, shouldn't secure go hand-in-hand with anonymity? It doesn't have to, but it can be.

Though Telegram has E2EE chats, they are not enabled by default. I wouldn’t consider it super secure.

My signal doesn’t require my last name though I’m on iOS

https://imgur.com/a/VTdTLv5

For the record it's not the case anymore. Now the last name is labelled "Optional".

Still very much the case, it’s always been “optional” but you can’t opt out of being bugged to add one over and over https://imgur.com/a/5JzEnTI

Weird, I don't remember ever seeing that and I don't have a last name set. Can't you just "confirm" it not to include a last name?

What happens if you click "Get Started" (and take no action after doing so, just return home) - does that dismiss further prompts?

Weird, I don't have that.

You can try to add a "last name", and then remove it. I think I put an initial at some point.

They should mention if these are just face obfuscating bandanas or whether they provide SARS-CoV2 protection—which it seems they might not.

I don’t think people are short of face coverings but they might be short on “Covid” masks. That would be more useful.

You can still ask Europe they have it in excess now.

I mean essentially unless a mask is one of the medically or industrially certified N95 and their ilk (which people are still discouraged from using due to shortages) I'd say it is hard to really quantify that one type of mask is better than another. Any covering that prevents you from spitting on people around you on accident should serve the purpose that health experts are recommending masks for. So I suspect this mask would serve both a public health and privacy protecting purpose.

They should state what it is. I think the CDC has approved some kinds of cloth masks (less effective but somewhat helpful)

They should state whether these meet the requirements and not give people the opportunity to reach misleading conclusions.

I just saw an article that the AI is capable of identifying the person with 98% accuracy even with the face mask covering till eyes.

It was one of the protestors throwing something to the cop car recently, and they were able to identify her.

Trying to find the article

How long until this arms race results in a real-life version of the scramble suits in A Scanner Darkly.

I'd be interested to see how effective the simple "black pantyhose over the head" is against facial recognition.

Obviously anecdotal but I tested a pic of me wearing a medical mask on Facebook and Google Photos and they weren't able to tag me.

Even with a covered face, agencies are deploying "gait recognition", which fingerprints you based on the way you walk. Here's an article about China doing it but I'm sure the US is as well: https://apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a

also, its funny to me that how, most non-technical people share and complain about all the technological things china uses to detect and identify, and then don't even think that U.S. might have similar or even better tools.

You can defeat that with 4 or 5 pieces of gravel...

Anyone else suffer from writers block because reality is stranger than fiction by a long shot these days?

Maybe need a mask like this to avoid such a tech: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51FFxPARjBL...

"Blur Tools for Signal" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23414556) was a huge thread the other day. How close is this?

In that post they mentioned they would be distributing face masks; this is the blog post announcing that initiative.

The first thing China did back then was to order mask obscured face recognition upgrade. Pretty sure US has it too. So much for the "encrypt" part. Hope Sygnal puts more meaning into "encryption" when it comes to message encryption :)

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