Creating a Signal account
builtformars.com
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After using WhatsApp for years my parents installed Signal. For some reason it was shown for them in English, which they both don't speak. And guess what, they could use it without any issues because all chat apps are the same.
* editing messages
* pinning messages
* small things like polls ( great for group chats ) and location sharing
* great API and bot framework ( awesome for public chats, and it can also be integrated for personal use ( e.g. i get a Telegram notification when someone enters home, and when my blog or VPN are down)
https://community.signalusers.org/t/live-location-sharing/25...
That being said, I still prefer Element over Signal.
I have used it for years, and the people and topics discussed there are specific. Just like they are even more specific in Threema. That is when you do (not) care for the lack of features since the return is worth it.
Not sure if I am (socially) capable of leaving WhatsApp.
Is there a specific feature of chat backups you are missing on Signal?
Contact discovery and adding - Signal has gone with the WhatsApp approach here. There are downsides like needing a phone number but it makes it very easy and means that they can do things like sending you notifications when one of your pre-existing contacts joins Signal.
Backups - this is my main sore point with Signal, in terms of recommending it to my friends. Unless they're conscientious or put in extra work they're going to lose all their message history when they get a new phone. You need to do manual backup and restore to transfer messages, and if your phone is lost/stolen then you're screwed. I've set up sync but it's quite a lot of work for what (e.g.) WhatsApp does for free.
Signal on Android does support encrypted backups, however they're not automatically synced with anything. I think on iOS there's a different way to migrate your data, but it seems to require a PC.
Signal has all the capabilities to do this and have encryption. Why does the chat backup feature (with 30 character passphrase) not offer to store the data in GDrive so that Android can restore it? It's an encrypted bundle so that should be fine.
This was the main reason I didn't choose Signal a couple of years ago.
I don't want all the people who have me in their contact database or vice versa (I'm not sure which it is) to get that notification. It's none of their business that I've joined Signal or when I do. Especially not the commercial contacts.
I joined Telegram thinking it didn't do that notification, and was surprised and annoyed when just after joining someone in my phone contacts then started a surprise chat with me. Yet I've never received a notification about anyone joining Telegram, so I must be confused about this feature.
I completely agree about Signal conversation backup being the biggest issue. For my uses, a chat app that doesn't save non-secret conversations in a way I can keep and search long term is of little interest. The ability to transfer history between Android devices is no use if the reason for having a new device is the old one is lost or broken.
(I use a mix of Telegram "secret" chats (which aren't sync'd) and regular chats (which are) depending on the subject, generally preferring the latter if it's not sensitive. I often want to refer back to things or search them, especially things like photos, dates of events, agreements, etc.)
Hey, you are not going to write a vapid Medium post filled with screenshots and emojis with this attitude, young boy.
Are you sure? Something tells me if I have to be called to show how one needs to use Signal if it was just as easy to use as WhatsApp, then something is wrong there; usability-wise.
For example, chat backups in Signal is less usable than WhatsApp. All chats are lost once a user changes their device, phone number, factory resets or loses their phone.
As some pointed out, the extra PIN requirement is a trade off that favours security over usability, so there's the risk of putting people off from using Signal and it can't be turned off or avoided.
> When the hype around Signal dies down, and people are trying to get all their friends to migrate from WhatsApp to Signal, it’ll be the UX that makes all the difference.
Absolutely put. Small things like this make the difference between why someone will stay on Signal forever or for 1 month and it's back to WhatsApp for them.
Same thing with backing up/restoring chat history. I guess there's a security argument to be made there, but it doesn't apply to most people. Are you leaking state secrets? By all means, crank all the security options to 11. Are you using it just to not have Zuck spy on your family conversations? Then bulletproof security doesn't matter that much and feel free to backup your chats.
Which is at odds with "signal doesn't store anything server side".
Choice of words, but it matters when building a narrative.
Why you can just export to file, import on new device is also a mystery to me, I think that would be acceptable to people (combined with phone number validation).
> I often find myself repeating the following: if you’re asking the user to set a password, tell them all the password rules.
And also on login please.
So far complaints have been:
- Lack of support for markdown (as in bold, italic etc.)
- Poor support on windows desktop (on this I cannot be more specific because I use signal ftom my iPhone exclusively)
Interesting. I hadn't noticed the lack of it but I will eventually. To be fair, markdown is supposed to be readable and meaningful in plain text, so even if the symbols are displayed without formatting it's still useful.
> - Poor support on windows desktop
I have not used the Windows app, but the macOS app is infinitely better than WhatsApp's shoddy WebUI.
The kicker is that Signal does support that stuff if you paste them, and shows it properly, it just doesn't have buttons to let you use the styles when writing.
It does perform a lot of disk IO on startup so if you store it on a rust platter it can take a _long_ time to start though.
During busy work periods, I'd close WhatsApp Desktop to help me focus, re-opening it when I'm done, and jumping back into the group conversations.
However on Signal, the app spends AGES downloading (and decrypting?) each message it's missed when you re-open it, and whats worse, is that you can't even use the app while it's doing it. Totally destroys any ad-hoc use of it.
As a primarily desktop based chat user, I found this issue to be a deal breaker, so back to WhatsApp I go.
> How do I enable a backup? Can I use an iCloud backup?
>
> - Storing messages outside of your active Signal device is not supported.
> - Messages are only stored locally.
> - An iTunes or iCloud backup does not contain any of your Signal message history.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...
Imagine you lost/broken phone and bought a replacement. Whatsapp would be able to restore all your history while in Signal you are out of luck.
For Samsung I think it is the latter, since many apps have the same problem on Samsung.
I presume these manufacturers allowlist WhatsApp by default. Hopefully Signal getting more popular will help it in that department.
So I have to ask myself: What happens if Signal has financial issues?
edit: Signal is open-source and non-profit as commenters pointed out. That's indeed advantageous.
There have been a number of independent security audits over the years, which are easy to find. WhatsApp code was never open, even pre-Facebook.
On the client side I find their interest on self-updating problematic (since they may silently push updates to specific users), but at least you do have the option to remove it.
That said, I (like others) am a bit concerned about the lack of updates to Signal-Server (https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/commits/master). Commits seemed to suddenly stop April last year, and I'd be very surprised if the actual Signal Server that's running in production hasn't been updated over such a long period. Would be very happy to be proven wrong here, or to be pointed in the direction of anything that might explain the lack of activity.
Signal not only encrypts messages (Whatsapp does as well), but also seem to make sure there is as little meta data available as possible. This should make it less interesting for eg. Facebook to buy them.
This data is there at any rate however confederated chat apps can use different servers (so data is not congregated) and you can also change accounts easily (it's harder to change phone number).
Similar philosophy to Signal of trying to really get usability right (looking at you, Element). Though still early in alpha development, wouldn't trust current alpha builds to be reliable.
But yeah, as long as they own the servers I am sure they could puzzle it together if they wanted.
At the end of the day they literally control the only in-pipe and the only out-pipe and can measure whatever the heck they want from it. Including from which address the message came from.
And I'm curious about how infrequent that is, considering that to use sealed sender you actually have to login 'frequently' to their server (to update the keys you use), and I couldn't see how much frequent that is (or even whether it is a server-initiated which would defeat the purpose).
It would need to be a month or so to have a reasonable benefit. But I don't see why that's not doable.
https://forum.f-droid.org/t/signal-wickr-on-f-droid-2021/122...
- get rid of the pin as a default option, it will confuse and put people off, keep that in the settings for people who care
- allow pictures/files to be sent to multiple targets (users or groups) - this one is SO annoying!
- save received media in the gallery automatically by default, most of the time they are precious memories and they need to be easily picked up by cloud uploaders, backup apps etc. Make this an option in the settings for people who care or do not want it.
- better error handling (as pointed out by the article)
- had friends who joined, but then quit/deleted the app, Signal still shows them.. this needs fixing, too
As mentioned in the article, WhatsApp UX is pretty world class, it's smooth, it's fast. Just copy it as much as you can.
I have tried to move some of my younger friends over and they appreciated the privacy angle, but I can see unless I actively push for it, they will "unknowingly" revert to WhatsApp.
I am holding off trying to migrate my older friends and family who are less flexible with tech stuff, I know I only probably have one shot at this and as it is Signal will fail. I will wait a couple more months and see if things have improved, if not, I'll just push for Telegram. Telegram is not as good as WhatsApp either UX-wise, but it's much better than Signal.. and the fact they have some really nice apps for desktop without requiring the phone as a "source of truth" is actually a big usability advantage.
As others said, it's not that I'm paranoid about state actors and am not adamant on perfect e2e encryption, I just don't want Zuck to take a peak or my children's photos to be used in some FB deep learning face recognition DB or god knows what else.
Nothing fishy at all about this.
Furthermore: no app can access the iOS keyboard or modify it for obvious security reasons. Having a numpad up is as good as it gets. So the critique about the recommendation of pasting the numeric code from messages is hardly valid.
That only happens if your name begins with "S". If your name is "Carol", you'll find it under "S".
(My name doesn't begin with S).
Perhaps they could improve the phrasing of the message, but they absolutely should not remove it.
I think that we need a sort of "truth in advertising" principle for these encrypted messaging things that claim end to end encryption. It is perfectly OK to trust an entity like Signal somewhat, particularly when the alternative is trusting an entity like Facebook. Just be honest enough to indicate that a major feature is not effective.
>Having to verify safety numbers out-of-band is an inescapable physical truth...
The reasons for this are fairly opaque to most people. It is kind of dishonest to just assume that people will do the checks for no real reason. You have to at least allow the user to understand the tool.
Note that Signal made it easier to ignore the change of a safety number a few years back. So in a sense they are getting worse at addressing the problem.
Signal does much better embeds though, and the call quality is pristine.
I tried to get people in my life to switch and failed. One person tried it out and quit in frustration because (a) messages dropped over the weekend (apparently during their downtime, and then (b) when they downloaded the desktop app they couldn't naturally continue the conversation that had started on mobile because the previous messages were not visible and so they could not be "replied to".
The first point isn't really an ease of use issue, but the second is definitely a tradeoff between usability and security.
So my friend left in frustration. Trivial inconveniences that would not deter someone who cares about using Signal can easily dissuade people who were not really motivated to switch in the first place.
And now I have my own frustration: once a user joins Signal once, the app shows them as having Signal even if they deleted the app and haven't used it in forever. So here I am sending messages to people who once tried the app and then quit and instead of those messages getting sent as SMS (which would happen had they never joined) they go nowhere.
Honestly I'm not really the target audience for a security-focused app. I'm interested in privacy and regaining autonomy in my digital life, not being beholden to the whims of a $BigTech ToS that changes every month and is my adversary. So I'm looking at Signal because it seems the best bet, but I'd prefer something that made fewer UX sacrifices for security.
From the first 4-5 slides it has so much pointless fluff that I bet the content is like 3 slides worth.
Guess I'll never know who wins Signal vs Whatsapp...
Too many emojis, didn’t read