I couldn't believe it when I first signed up for Signal and people who had my number were * sent notifications * that I had just signed up. This could've included people I had blocked on my phone.
Absolutely unacceptable.
Same with prioritizing stories, stickers and crypto payments as core features of Signal when that's not what most of their users care for. Meanwhile there's still no official way to port your existing chat history on PC and iOS to your new device, or support for Android tablets. Obviously, stickers are more important.
Obviously, the cryptographic guarantees of the two systems aren't even close to comparable.
I don't know what "feature" you're talking about not existing until 2014, but before Open Whisper Systems, the thing we call Signal was "TextSecure", a literal SMS replacement.
And some are better at being messengers than others.
Forcing you to use your phone number and then the same second you created your account go behind your back and spam everyone you just did so is neither private nor something many would associate with secure.
I guess something doesn't have to be secure if you can pretend it is public.
Of course Signal has carefully designed their goals to allow them to do that but in doing so that is a straight up asshole move in a context where they should be seeking trust?
Absolutely mind bending.
This is a great improvement, but they have already proven they can't be trusted with anyone's phone number so it is a damn shame they still won't allow you to create an account without one.
It is a decent service otherwise, but my fricking god I hope they at some point realize the harm they've done.
Up until today I've been ashamed of suggesting signal. Hopefully that will change with this feature.
1. Users were properly informed
2. Users were given the option to opt-out
And please don't pretend being annoyed about not being able to write third party client is in the same realm, that is just disingenuous.
And I'm not talking about something obnoxious like a cookie-banner here, something in the fine-print would go a long way.
I think it's a mischaracterization to say that they spam "everyone" when you create an account. They only tell others who a) have you in their contact lists, and b) have an account with Signal too. I agree, though, that they should be more transparent about this, and require that you opt in to this behavior.
Personally, though, I don't mind it; for the most part this is how I've discovered other contacts on Signal, and vice versa. But I can understand why it makes some people uncomfortable.
What I find "absolutely mind bending" is that this is such a big deal-breaker for people such as yourself. While I wouldn't call it a nothingburger, it's -- to me -- at most a simple error in assuming what people are comfortable with.
Edit: I re-read what a few others had said upthread about how indiscriminate this new-user notification is. The examples of notifications being sent to users that had been blocked via the phone's built-in call/SMS blocking features are especially chilling. There's really no excuse for that, but still, to me this automatic notification is a feature developed in good faith, with good intentions, not some nefarious privacy invasion. They should be taken to task for its failings, but dismissing the entire platform over it seems a bit over the top.
Of course it does, way more than "meaningfully". I actually wonder if I got your message right taken that I am not a native speaker of English.
Do you mean that if your phone is public (and you are known to be the owner) you will not get creepy calls, have ot listed as a free pizza delivery for calls after 23:00, having it blacklisted, ....
I must have understood wrong.
Otherwise what is the number of your president/prime minister? Or the CEO of Google/Apple/... I do not think they are public.
This mechanism may not be ideal for all users, and it's possible that Signal has now outgrown it, but without it, there would be no Signal as we know it today.
How did THAT feature help Signal grow?
You only receive that spammy message if you already have Signal installed and your contact already has it too.
Signal grew a lot in 2021 (in Europe) because of the pandemonium created by Meta when they announced a change in WhatsApp Privacy Policy so everyone rushed to install Signal but the initial surge, was short lived.
Moving the clocks forward to today, looking at my extended network of family, friends and acquaintances, almost everyone has Signal installed, but most don't use it anymore as it's too frustrating and feels dead, so everything is still on WhatsApp, especially groups. All the Signal groups I have, originally meant to replace the WhatsApp groups, slowly died out and people stopped posting on them or following them, defaulting instead back to the WhatsApp groups.
You don't fix this lack of retention with stickers and spammy messenges.
Who said Signal was a good product to begin with? And who though adding sticker would improve market share?
Casual users value UX and porting their chat history and VoIP calling vastly more than they value E-2-E encryption. You can't talk about growth when you fail to deliver on these fronts first. That's how Telegram and WhatsApps rule the market.
Adding stickers won't move the userbase needle when you already lost your potential users at the lack of chat history and UX.
My daughter loves stickers.
Also: "Who said Signal was a good product to begin with?" LOL. Just read the comments on this link bro.
How does Signal count it's active userbase? Like I said, me and almost everyone else I know have it installed but don't regularly use it because most people don't really like it versus the established Telegram and Whatsapp.
Like I said, a lot of people have Signal, but very few use it as their primary messenger on a regular basis, and more of a "it's just there in case one of those tech nerds who told me to install it decided to message me on"
Yes. I think your definition of "active user" is non-standard.
If you only use it a couple of times per week you're not really an active users when messenger apps on average get used multiple times per day.
So I don't think I;[m unreasonable at all to compare Signal to the average messaging apps in term of screen time.
That said, the complaint around this is usually that people don't want others to know that they use Signal. And unfortunately there was no way to _really_ do that (until now), because if you open your chat list, you'll see all of your registered contacts. But in the 7.0 release, we added the ability to hide yourself from being discoverable by phone number at all. So for people who don't want anyone else to know that their phone number is registered with Signal, they now have that option.
How can a privacy oriented company not see the privacy implication of this? Sometimes, you want to be forgotten by some people, and Signal is telling them you are still there and active on that number. I remember reading a story about someone getting into real trouble for that.
Without "usernames", the proper way to handle it would have been to not let anyone know you are on signal when they look up your number. To get into contact, send a message, then the recipient will receive a notification with the message and an option to rely. If the recipient doesn't respond, from the sender point of view, it should be as if the account didn't exist.
But I think it's inexcusable that these sorts of notifications could essentially allow someone to circumvent blocking done by one of their contacts. If I've blocked someone via my phone's default contact blocking mechanism, and then I join Signal, and that person is already on Signal, they should not suddenly be able to contact me... and even be explicitly invited to do so on their end!
I wouldn't be surprised, though, if neither Android nor iOS gives regular apps access to the blocked contacts list. So I'm not really sure how an app like Signal could solve this problem.
great, but what about all of those people that installed before 7.0 and had it already happen to them? "oops" doesn't help. at. all.
yeah, you need to authenticate to delete the account (aka deregister). How else would they verify that you are the owner of the account you want to delete?
> We've discussed at length why this is not possible, but if you have more thoughts then please visit the forums. Please try not to open duplicate issues in the future, even if you feel like something is important.
I wonder why this is "not possible"
People seem to be asking for a way they can join Signal without their number showing up in the registry of Signal users. This is why it's "not possible".
edit: This may have changed today. I'm now seeing an option that lets me hide my number from the registry. This means that even someone with my phone number will not be able to message me on Signal, which seems like a good deal to me.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007061452-Do...
Settings > Notifications > Notify When > Contact joins Signal