Seems like a major weakness if your local government can somehow just log you out of your secure messaging platform.
LoRa uses license-free sub-gigahertz radio frequency bands like 433 MHz, 868 MHz (Europe), 915 MHz (Australia and North America), 865 MHz to 867 MHz (India) and 923 MHz (Asia).
Regardless, please avoid snark on HN. It does not add value to the conversation.
Have there been any cases where the people have spoken out against such regulations, and they have been reversed?
I think officially it’s just (2) and (1) is just a side effect, but I think it’s secretly more about (1)
I don't see this sim lockdown being a problem unless you want to create a new account or for some reason your account has been logged out requiring 2FA. In my understanding, telegram also asks for SMS for 2FA on re-login. Though the 2FA code will be simultaneously sent to any other device you've logged the account in.
If a country has gotten to the point that you would be targeted just for having an app installed, just changing to usernames wouldn't be enough, as users could be easily detected through network logging (thanks AWS and Google for killing domain fronting [0]). Your usecase sounds like it needs an app like Briar.
It's pushed as a secure messaging client, and so when it doesn't meet the standards for that people will mention it so potential users have the information needed for a risk assessment.
Usernames: Signal needs to store your social graph (in a privacy preserving fashion) on a central server.
So, paradoxically, phone numbers were the easiest and most secure option to start with.
Actually, there must be methods for distributed routing. How does TOR finally map a hidden service to an IP address?
Maybe there can be a dynamic DNS service for user accounts on an anonymous messaging network?
Sometimes you can get logged out going from wifi to LTE/mobile data on either of those apps, I have had that happen, and this can create issues like this which means you will have to create another account and may not have your contact list etc... which is impossible if you're trying to use your mobile number you use.
It's kind of crazy that all of our over-paranoid back ups and ad-hoc solutions have been so damn necessary for even the normal person in the last 10 years, be it PgP, burner sms numbers, cryptocurrency, apps like TG and Signal etc...
As some have mentioned Moxie said he wants to move away from phone based accounts, and now that Elon sent him a ton of new users from all walks of Life that this may need to be accelerated, which from what I garnered from his podcast with JR it's just not well staffed and is in need of some your guys' talents.
Some eBay traders will sell activated SIMs but you are essentially trusting a third party.
Agreed, to an extent.
But not if you know how to do the legwork; I have 4 active Telegram/Signal accounts on sveral devices using apps that allowed me to register and acquire a US/EU based mobile number.
I completely lost al ofl those passwords and access to those old numbers (didn't use them after activation years ago) but it certainly is possible if you do the legwork.
So I'd assume accidentally with something about the cell phones changing making Signal and Telegraph want to re-authenticate.
Or the person has cleared their phone for obvious reasons which also logged them out.
If you are afraid of government interferance and too lazy to usw xmpp/Matrix why wouldn't you configure at least signal securely?