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I'm feeling dirty, because I don't like to be that negative, especially if we're talking open-source software. And I feel that I kinda hold this project to high

I'm feeling dirty, because I don't like to be that negative, especially if we're talking open-source software. And I feel that I kinda hold this project to higher standards: If I compare this to WhatsApp/Telegram/Threema/Whatever, I inheritently, somewhat subconciously expect more from Signal. And I'm disappointed. I tend to repeat the 'central server' and 'a phone number is not an address and not public information, it certainly is no identity' criticism. When I read the headline/title, I thought 'Now maybe that would be enough to be ~good enough~ to ditch Telegram' in spite of these problems (which Telegram has as well, ofc). But really. A Chrome app. And works only (yeah, I think I said it before: Phone numbers suck) as a secondary client. And only if the first client is Android? I seriously don't get it. And it certainly is not for me: I don't like that browser (I do have it installed for testing and to follow it at times, but there's no 'app' I'd run in Chrome). I don't want to tie something to my phone and I don't think that it should matter what platform my handset runs on - SailfishOS looks nice, FxOS progresses slow but ticks a good number of boxes for me. Full circle to the first line: I don't _like_ to be negative and the headline gave me hope for a couple seconds. Unfortunately this release just deepened my belief that Signal wasn't meant to be for me.

tptacek 11y ago
The central server in Signal does not have the same role as the Telegram's. If you care first and foremost about UX, use Telegram. If you care first and foremost about the security of your communications, use Signal; go out of your way to use Signal.
- aw3c2 11y ago
  > go out of your way to use Signal With that mindset we will never get secure communications to the masses but will repeat the PGP dilemma again and again. UX is of utmost importance. We would still be on 99.99% HTTP websites if HTTPS required going out of one's way.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    That's what the Cryptocat people said.
    - aw3c2 11y ago
      Is it? It is also what Edward Snowden said.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        In fact, he may have even said it on Cryptocat; Poitras and Greenwald used it to collaborate with him. Snowden also used Lavabit to send email. Why? Because Lavabit had superior UX to his other options --- because Lavabit handled all the crypto serverside. NSA has presumably read everything he sent on both of those systems. Despite the extreme ease of use both systems boasted, they were both so badly designed that they enabled retroactive decryption. So I think, if that was an attempt at a rebuttal, it was not a very effective one.
        mynewtb 11y ago
        So they used bad products because their UX was good. That seems to be grandparent's point?
        tptacek 11y ago
        Secure messaging products with good UX and bad security should wait to launch until they can have good security; the alternative puts people at risk, as it did to Snowden.
        mynewtb 11y ago
        They should but they don't. That's why have competitive UX is important for the good tools or people won't even consider using them. We have seen that happen countless times.
  - 11y ago
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Tbh, Signal's UX on Android is pretty good. Is Telegram just better on iOS or am I missing something when you say it has better UX?
  - newman314 11y ago
    Enh. Signal's UX is still not effortless. For example: * Does not make it clear it's a point to point mapping (on iOS) right now. I discovered this the hard way. * Unclear failure modes (see above). It's entirely possible to have messages be silently dropped. * Texting vs. call methods unclear. I.e. there's a phone icon but no text icon (select name instead). * Contacts list has some text only, some phone only, some both. * The whole contacts list arguably needs to be rethought. It only shows others that have installed Signal/RedPhone/Textsecure. There is no easy way to see if someone does NOT have Signal installed and have the functionality to send a link to invite other person to add the app. I think this would help tremendously in the virality of the app. * There used to be easy ways to invite people to the app within the app, seems to have gone away with only a tweet an invite to app store function remaining. * There have been several instances when I can't see someone after they install Signal. They have to initiate a message to me in order for the contact to show up in the list. * Signal has poor handling for contacts with multiple numbers. It's not clear which number is being used and you can't switch selection of numbers. So what I'm saying is don't necessarily ape what Telegram/WhatsApp etc. is doing but I think Signal would do well to study hard the onboarding workflows of those apps.
    - mapgrep 11y ago
      What do you mean it's a point-to-point mapping? Genuinely curious. You mean that there is no server to buffer failed delivery attempts if one of the devices is off or disconnected? (Side note, I've hit that the same bug where the other person has to contact me first because they don't show up in my contacts, even though they should.)
      - newman314 11y ago
        It's one device to one device (as stated elsewhere in this thread. Apparently, only Android+Chrome combo is supported for multi-device). Put differently, I can't register the same number to an iPad and iPhone simultaneously at this time and hope to communicate with someone. It apparently gets things all confused. I was doing some more testing and it also appears that I'm unable to call someone with a greyed out name but with available phone icon. Once again, no clear indication if this is a bug (not supposed to happen) or a feature (can call but not text).
- Zash 11y ago
  What if you care about control over the system and not being tied to a single vendor?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Then you definitely don't want to be using Telegram.
    - newscracker 11y ago
      I'm curious about this response. Could you please explain or point to something that explains, for a common person who doesn't code or cannot build code or cannot maintain servers, how Signal would provide more control and avoid being locked to a single vendor when compared to Telegram?
      - Zash 11y ago
        It does not. In practice both are equivalent in that regard. I guess tptacek meant that Signal might have less control over you than Telegram, but that's a different issue from what I was thinking of. Both Telegram, Signal¹ rely on a central server to which all users connect. If that server goes up in flames then nothing will work for anyone. Or if those who run it turn out to be evil or otherwise doing bad things then there is nowhere you can go without losing all your contacts. But in a system that has multiple servers that talk to each other, like email and Jabber/XMPP, you have a choice in who provides the server while still being able to talk to everyone on the network. So then it is at least possible to switch to another server or provider and still be able to reach your contacts. It is also possible to run your own server, or convince your more technical friend to run one for you. This model is called a federated client-server model. A true serverless peer-to-peer system would in theory be even better, but in practice it is much harder to build and maintain, especially on mobile where devices may lose coverage at any time. So for example Skype (before Microsoft bought them) would promote some clients to "super nodes" which other clients would use to communicate ... kinda like having servers but with less control over who they are. (Note, I work on XMPP software so I'm kinda biased) ¹ There appears to exist server software but it is unsupported and might not be useful for more than talking to yourself.
- newscracker 11y ago
  This reply is mainly intended for Moxie and the team developing Signal as feedback (which they probably have received from others). I'm not going to focus on security, because Signal is likely the best on that front from whatever I have read. I really want Signal to be my only app for chats and I do try Signal once in a while, but I always go back to Telegram for a few reasons. Telegram is very fast in delivering messages, just like it claims. Signal, on the other hand, has been and continues to be slow. Messages could sometimes take anywhere from 10 seconds to even a minute or several minutes to get delivered. That's not really a good UX for chats when you can't say whether your message would get delivered or not. If I wanted to send a slightly urgent message (urgent enough to be a message but not urgent enough to be a call), I wouldn't rely on the current implementation of Signal. Back and forth communication also becomes very odd and frustrating if the messages don't get delivered within a few seconds. Even SMS seems better when compared to Signal's speed of message delivery. Next is the multi-device availability and syncing of conversations in Telegram. Once you get used to having Telegram on the desktop/laptop and phone (and perhaps a tablet), it fits in so well with the physical location someone is in, what the person is doing and which device the person feels comfortable with. There are many people who have deep and heavy conversations on these chat apps, and doing that on a small screen's touch keyboard is a big hindrance. Being able to do that with a laptop or a desktop makes it so superior an experience that it's difficult to give that up. People that I chat with either don't know much about encryption and privacy or don't care much about those. Getting some of them to use Telegram instead of WhatsApp was difficult, but they're now big fans of Telegram because of how it works and what it provides. But getting them to move to Signal? I can't imagine doing that with the current state of affairs with Signal. While Signal may be a very secure chat app, not focusing on the things that help increase UX (and in turn, market share) will not help in the long run. My hope and wish is that Signal development would accelerate faster and provide quicker releases that solve what I see as fundamental issues. This would benefit everyone and make our world a much better place.
cvwright 11y ago
I feel a lot of the same things. But, on the bright side: 1. It's early days yet -- let's give them some time to work out the bugs and build out more diverse platform support. 2. The code is open source. If we (or anybody else) gets motivated enough, we can add support for other browsers or build a "real" standalone app.
dates 11y ago
To me, this announcement feels pre-mature, the software doesn't seem ready until it integrates with other clients. But I think, giving time, your concerns could be addressed: -Integration with other devices, backing up and importing your back up between devices, are features that will come, eventually. -There are several 3rd party standalone desktop apps being developed for Signal. -You could maybe build a Textsecure server, and in the future, who knows, there may be documentation for doing so. Maybe Signal isn't ready for you right now now but I wouldn't count it out!
- 01Michael10 11y ago
  Huh? It's pre-mature to announce a beta product?
59hhllhbhvc7 11y ago
They don't like to admit it, but Signal has a metadata problem. It's fine if that's not their threat model, but I wish they would be more clear about it, especially when other chat systems get criticism more often for precisely that aspect. Edit: "As far as we can determine, practical privacy preserving contact discovery remains an unsolved problem." -03 Jan 2014 [0] https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/ The kind of data they hold is legally within the reach of authorities and would allow metadata analysis similar to the NSA's former phone metadata program.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Your criticism would be stronger with a list of examples and evidence they are unfixed for at least 6 months. EDIT: That metadata problem is essentially unsolved and unsolvable. No system is immune to metadata contact discovery at present. For instance, https://ricochet.im/ https://ricochet.im/, is attempting to solve that problem by relying on the user to make the initial exchange securely. However, in reality, any method of relaying that to their contact point is vulnerable to discovery of that kind of metadata.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- j_s 11y ago
  Do you have time to share more details on Signal's metdata problem, especially if you have any ideas about what they could do to solve it? Is this something that is going to require a Tor-like approach to even have a chance of fixing?
  - codethief 11y ago
    Privacy-preserving contact discovery and obfuscation of a message's metadata (what Tor can be used for) are pretty much orthogonal issues: The first case is about finding out who of your contacts uses Signal, too. The way it's done in Signal right now is described here: https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/. The second problem is about whether anyone gets to see who is sending messages to whom, e.g. by tapping the wires or running the central server all messages are being routed through (for instance, Signal uses such a server). In both cases, your social network might get get exposed depending on what data is exposed exactly (IP addresses, pseudonyms, …) and what the attacker can infer from it (your name / home address?). Let me know if that helps.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
moxie 11y ago
If we were going to rank our priorities, they would be in this order: 1) Make mass surveillance impossible. 2) Stop targeted attacks against crypto nerds. It's not that we don't find #2 laudable, but optimizing for #1 takes precedence when we're making decisions. If you don't want to use your phone number, don't use it. You can register with any GV, Twilio, Voicepulse, or other throwaway VoIP number. If you don't want to run Chrome, use Chromium instead. If you don't want to use Google Play Services, use GcmCore. The world you want this software for is not the world that everyone else lives in. You can certainly make it work in that world with a little effort, but because of how we've prioritized our objectives, that's not the default experience.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  If someone was able to come up with a native equivalent, would you support that level of access or is that something you'd oppose? It seems to me, at least, it might be possible to do so if the API was consistently exposed and versioned.
- darklajid 11y ago
  Thank you for your reply. I really appreciate it. As I stated earlier, I feel bad about 'expecting more' here - I certainly see the appeal of a popular ~decent~ option. Without trying to derail this further, let me look at those points: If I use throwaway numbers: What happens if I lose access? Do I _need_ the number for anything in the future (say, device died)? Can someone else mess with me if they get access to this number, if the number gets reassigned? Searching for this kind of information is hard, because 'Signal' isn't exactly a word that search engines understand in context. Chromium and Chrome are the same thing for me: A browser I don't care for and only install on a dev machine for some tests. I wouldn't install either on my personal rig, ignoring the suffixes. And certainly not for an 'app'. It's both 'Not liking Google' and 'No general web browser to run an IM client'. The latter isn't solved by Chromium. As far as I'm aware there are no Google Play Services for FxOS (looking at this Flame right here) and I expect that there's no easy solution for SailfishOS either. I understand that I'm not the target audience. Please believe me when I say that I don't feel that I can (as in, it suits me/feels okay to do so) use Signal right now. I'm writing these messages here not to hit on your work, but to express that there is an audience with other preferences/goals. It's Christmas soon, after all - consider this my public, unrealistic, idealistic wishlist. (Edit: And I apologize that my critical comment ranks rather high right now. I might believe that I'm not completely bonkers and there are other people that feel the same way, but it still sucks to see this kind of feedback on an announcement post)
Drdrdrq 11y ago
Isn't Chrome app a standalone app which doesn't run inside Chrome browser, but instead only uses its engine? I don't know anything about security or privacy implications of using this tech though, anyone care to comment?
- finnn 11y ago
  No, you're likely thinking of Electron[0]. A Chrome App[1] is a browser extension that tries to act more like a native app. [0]: http://electron.atom.io/ http://electron.atom.io/ [1]: https://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps https://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
plusquamperfekt 11y ago
> I tend to repeat the 'central server' and 'a phone number is not an address and not public information, it certainly is no identity' criticism. Your phone number is not your identity in Signal. If you change SIM cards then your friends won't notice and the app works as before. Signal is based on asym encryption - your private key effectively encodes your identity in combination with your public key. > And only if the first client is Android? There is no point in dwelling on that. Android and its syblings are the only potentially secure popular smartphone OSs. Apple and Microsoft OSs are fundamentally flawed in that regard.
- darklajid 11y ago
  We had a similar exchange earlier. If the phone number isn't my identity - what is the phone number for? I don't need a phone number to generate my key, do I? It seems, as far as I can follow from the outside, that phone numbers are used as namespace. Maybe 'identity' goes too far, but so far I understand that the number you register with is your - erm - user id? Help me out. If that's totally wrong, if I "didn't get it", I'd be glad to learn more. But .. then again: Why require a phone number (-> No standalone client on the desktop)? Thomas basically destroyed that security argument already, and I'd actually prefer a niche OS (FxOS, but I'm getting more and more into SailfishOS demos atm).
- tptacek 11y ago
  Approximately zero is the number of software security experts that would agree with that assessment of Android's security versus that of iOS. There are a lot of totally fine reasons (shakes fist) that OWS would start with Android; they might all have Android phones, they might have ideological problems with app store review, it might have just been an easier platform to build for. But yours isn't one of the valid reasons.
  - plusquamperfekt 11y ago
    Huh? Apple and MS have a record of communicating in sharing data with US government - plus as companies providing closed source software they are likely to introduce backdoors ... also something you might have heard of since Snowden.
JetSetWilly 11y ago
I just found it unreliably slow. Principles are all good, but if I message my gf saying "see you at the bus stop in 20 minutes" and she doesn't receive the message for 2 hours, that's majorly annoying and it happened so often I had to leave it. The basic functionality isn't fit for purpose, for me.
- bakhy 11y ago
  are you sure it's Signal? cause i have this problem with my husband too, but it happens with Hangouts as well as with Signal. my best guess is that his android phone, a cheaper LG model, has limited resources and puts some services to sleep...
  - JetSetWilly 11y ago
    Yes, because it happens on recent hardware (a 6s) and other messaging systems don't seem to have this issue at all under the same conditions. Most of the time it would work fine, but quite frequently messages would be sent (have left my device) but not appear on the receiving device for ages, so i can only assume that sometimes the infra couldn't keep up.
    - xorcist 11y ago
      Is there no acknowledgement of received messages? That seems somewhat of an oversight over unreliable third-party transports.
      - haffenloher 11y ago
        Yes, there is.
- Certhas 11y ago
  I used to have the problem but just trying it again now the situation has dramatically improved for me.
- Symen 11y ago
akerro 11y ago
I feel the same but in a bit other way. They tied up everything very closely to google services and they tell me "we really care about your privacy so use our app that requires google play frameworks on your android device". Those are two completely different things, use gapps or opensystem apps? It's 100% no-go for me and the whole idea seems to be a bit sarcastic for me. It hurt me when they removed content encryption from TextSecure because "NSA cares about metadata not content", yea, but European agencies like GCHQ care about content not meta-data.
- dTal 11y ago
  You might find SMSSecure, the SMS-only TextSecure fork, useful.
- f444fz 11y ago
  Content encryption has not been removed. It never will.
OvermindDL1 11y ago
Sounds like Tox might be for you then.

tptacek 11y ago

The central server in Signal does not have the same role as the Telegram's. If you care first and foremost about UX, use Telegram. If you care first and foremost about the security of your communications, use Signal; go out of your way to use Signal.

aw3c2 11y ago
> go out of your way to use Signal With that mindset we will never get secure communications to the masses but will repeat the PGP dilemma again and again. UX is of utmost importance. We would still be on 99.99% HTTP websites if HTTPS required going out of one's way.
- tptacek 11y ago
  That's what the Cryptocat people said.
  - aw3c2 11y ago
    Is it? It is also what Edward Snowden said.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      In fact, he may have even said it on Cryptocat; Poitras and Greenwald used it to collaborate with him. Snowden also used Lavabit to send email. Why? Because Lavabit had superior UX to his other options --- because Lavabit handled all the crypto serverside. NSA has presumably read everything he sent on both of those systems. Despite the extreme ease of use both systems boasted, they were both so badly designed that they enabled retroactive decryption. So I think, if that was an attempt at a rebuttal, it was not a very effective one.
      - mynewtb 11y ago
        So they used bad products because their UX was good. That seems to be grandparent's point?
        tptacek 11y ago
        Secure messaging products with good UX and bad security should wait to launch until they can have good security; the alternative puts people at risk, as it did to Snowden.
        mynewtb 11y ago
        They should but they don't. That's why have competitive UX is important for the good tools or people won't even consider using them. We have seen that happen countless times.
- 11y ago
fweespeech 11y ago
Tbh, Signal's UX on Android is pretty good. Is Telegram just better on iOS or am I missing something when you say it has better UX?
- newman314 11y ago
  Enh. Signal's UX is still not effortless. For example: * Does not make it clear it's a point to point mapping (on iOS) right now. I discovered this the hard way. * Unclear failure modes (see above). It's entirely possible to have messages be silently dropped. * Texting vs. call methods unclear. I.e. there's a phone icon but no text icon (select name instead). * Contacts list has some text only, some phone only, some both. * The whole contacts list arguably needs to be rethought. It only shows others that have installed Signal/RedPhone/Textsecure. There is no easy way to see if someone does NOT have Signal installed and have the functionality to send a link to invite other person to add the app. I think this would help tremendously in the virality of the app. * There used to be easy ways to invite people to the app within the app, seems to have gone away with only a tweet an invite to app store function remaining. * There have been several instances when I can't see someone after they install Signal. They have to initiate a message to me in order for the contact to show up in the list. * Signal has poor handling for contacts with multiple numbers. It's not clear which number is being used and you can't switch selection of numbers. So what I'm saying is don't necessarily ape what Telegram/WhatsApp etc. is doing but I think Signal would do well to study hard the onboarding workflows of those apps.
  - mapgrep 11y ago
    What do you mean it's a point-to-point mapping? Genuinely curious. You mean that there is no server to buffer failed delivery attempts if one of the devices is off or disconnected? (Side note, I've hit that the same bug where the other person has to contact me first because they don't show up in my contacts, even though they should.)
    - newman314 11y ago
      It's one device to one device (as stated elsewhere in this thread. Apparently, only Android+Chrome combo is supported for multi-device). Put differently, I can't register the same number to an iPad and iPhone simultaneously at this time and hope to communicate with someone. It apparently gets things all confused. I was doing some more testing and it also appears that I'm unable to call someone with a greyed out name but with available phone icon. Once again, no clear indication if this is a bug (not supposed to happen) or a feature (can call but not text).
Zash 11y ago
What if you care about control over the system and not being tied to a single vendor?
- tptacek 11y ago
  Then you definitely don't want to be using Telegram.
  - newscracker 11y ago
    I'm curious about this response. Could you please explain or point to something that explains, for a common person who doesn't code or cannot build code or cannot maintain servers, how Signal would provide more control and avoid being locked to a single vendor when compared to Telegram?
    - Zash 11y ago
      It does not. In practice both are equivalent in that regard. I guess tptacek meant that Signal might have less control over you than Telegram, but that's a different issue from what I was thinking of. Both Telegram, Signal¹ rely on a central server to which all users connect. If that server goes up in flames then nothing will work for anyone. Or if those who run it turn out to be evil or otherwise doing bad things then there is nowhere you can go without losing all your contacts. But in a system that has multiple servers that talk to each other, like email and Jabber/XMPP, you have a choice in who provides the server while still being able to talk to everyone on the network. So then it is at least possible to switch to another server or provider and still be able to reach your contacts. It is also possible to run your own server, or convince your more technical friend to run one for you. This model is called a federated client-server model. A true serverless peer-to-peer system would in theory be even better, but in practice it is much harder to build and maintain, especially on mobile where devices may lose coverage at any time. So for example Skype (before Microsoft bought them) would promote some clients to "super nodes" which other clients would use to communicate ... kinda like having servers but with less control over who they are. (Note, I work on XMPP software so I'm kinda biased) ¹ There appears to exist server software but it is unsupported and might not be useful for more than talking to yourself.
newscracker 11y ago
This reply is mainly intended for Moxie and the team developing Signal as feedback (which they probably have received from others). I'm not going to focus on security, because Signal is likely the best on that front from whatever I have read. I really want Signal to be my only app for chats and I do try Signal once in a while, but I always go back to Telegram for a few reasons. Telegram is very fast in delivering messages, just like it claims. Signal, on the other hand, has been and continues to be slow. Messages could sometimes take anywhere from 10 seconds to even a minute or several minutes to get delivered. That's not really a good UX for chats when you can't say whether your message would get delivered or not. If I wanted to send a slightly urgent message (urgent enough to be a message but not urgent enough to be a call), I wouldn't rely on the current implementation of Signal. Back and forth communication also becomes very odd and frustrating if the messages don't get delivered within a few seconds. Even SMS seems better when compared to Signal's speed of message delivery. Next is the multi-device availability and syncing of conversations in Telegram. Once you get used to having Telegram on the desktop/laptop and phone (and perhaps a tablet), it fits in so well with the physical location someone is in, what the person is doing and which device the person feels comfortable with. There are many people who have deep and heavy conversations on these chat apps, and doing that on a small screen's touch keyboard is a big hindrance. Being able to do that with a laptop or a desktop makes it so superior an experience that it's difficult to give that up. People that I chat with either don't know much about encryption and privacy or don't care much about those. Getting some of them to use Telegram instead of WhatsApp was difficult, but they're now big fans of Telegram because of how it works and what it provides. But getting them to move to Signal? I can't imagine doing that with the current state of affairs with Signal. While Signal may be a very secure chat app, not focusing on the things that help increase UX (and in turn, market share) will not help in the long run. My hope and wish is that Signal development would accelerate faster and provide quicker releases that solve what I see as fundamental issues. This would benefit everyone and make our world a much better place.

cvwright 11y ago

I feel a lot of the same things. But, on the bright side: 1. It's early days yet -- let's give them some time to work out the bugs and build out more diverse platform support. 2. The code is open source. If we (or anybody else) gets motivated enough, we can add support for other browsers or build a "real" standalone app.

dates 11y ago

To me, this announcement feels pre-mature, the software doesn't seem ready until it integrates with other clients. But I think, giving time, your concerns could be addressed: -Integration with other devices, backing up and importing your back up between devices, are features that will come, eventually. -There are several 3rd party standalone desktop apps being developed for Signal. -You could maybe build a Textsecure server, and in the future, who knows, there may be documentation for doing so. Maybe Signal isn't ready for you right now now but I wouldn't count it out!

01Michael10 11y ago
Huh? It's pre-mature to announce a beta product?

59hhllhbhvc7 11y ago

They don't like to admit it, but Signal has a metadata problem. It's fine if that's not their threat model, but I wish they would be more clear about it, especially when other chat systems get criticism more often for precisely that aspect. Edit: "As far as we can determine, practical privacy preserving contact discovery remains an unsolved problem." -03 Jan 2014 [0] https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/ The kind of data they hold is legally within the reach of authorities and would allow metadata analysis similar to the NSA's former phone metadata program.

fweespeech 11y ago
Your criticism would be stronger with a list of examples and evidence they are unfixed for at least 6 months. EDIT: That metadata problem is essentially unsolved and unsolvable. No system is immune to metadata contact discovery at present. For instance, https://ricochet.im/ https://ricochet.im/, is attempting to solve that problem by relying on the user to make the initial exchange securely. However, in reality, any method of relaying that to their contact point is vulnerable to discovery of that kind of metadata.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
j_s 11y ago
Do you have time to share more details on Signal's metdata problem, especially if you have any ideas about what they could do to solve it? Is this something that is going to require a Tor-like approach to even have a chance of fixing?
- codethief 11y ago
  Privacy-preserving contact discovery and obfuscation of a message's metadata (what Tor can be used for) are pretty much orthogonal issues: The first case is about finding out who of your contacts uses Signal, too. The way it's done in Signal right now is described here: https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/. The second problem is about whether anyone gets to see who is sending messages to whom, e.g. by tapping the wires or running the central server all messages are being routed through (for instance, Signal uses such a server). In both cases, your social network might get get exposed depending on what data is exposed exactly (IP addresses, pseudonyms, …) and what the attacker can infer from it (your name / home address?). Let me know if that helps.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

moxie 11y ago

If we were going to rank our priorities, they would be in this order: 1) Make mass surveillance impossible. 2) Stop targeted attacks against crypto nerds. It's not that we don't find #2 laudable, but optimizing for #1 takes precedence when we're making decisions. If you don't want to use your phone number, don't use it. You can register with any GV, Twilio, Voicepulse, or other throwaway VoIP number. If you don't want to run Chrome, use Chromium instead. If you don't want to use Google Play Services, use GcmCore. The world you want this software for is not the world that everyone else lives in. You can certainly make it work in that world with a little effort, but because of how we've prioritized our objectives, that's not the default experience.

fweespeech 11y ago
If someone was able to come up with a native equivalent, would you support that level of access or is that something you'd oppose? It seems to me, at least, it might be possible to do so if the API was consistently exposed and versioned.
darklajid 11y ago
Thank you for your reply. I really appreciate it. As I stated earlier, I feel bad about 'expecting more' here - I certainly see the appeal of a popular ~decent~ option. Without trying to derail this further, let me look at those points: If I use throwaway numbers: What happens if I lose access? Do I _need_ the number for anything in the future (say, device died)? Can someone else mess with me if they get access to this number, if the number gets reassigned? Searching for this kind of information is hard, because 'Signal' isn't exactly a word that search engines understand in context. Chromium and Chrome are the same thing for me: A browser I don't care for and only install on a dev machine for some tests. I wouldn't install either on my personal rig, ignoring the suffixes. And certainly not for an 'app'. It's both 'Not liking Google' and 'No general web browser to run an IM client'. The latter isn't solved by Chromium. As far as I'm aware there are no Google Play Services for FxOS (looking at this Flame right here) and I expect that there's no easy solution for SailfishOS either. I understand that I'm not the target audience. Please believe me when I say that I don't feel that I can (as in, it suits me/feels okay to do so) use Signal right now. I'm writing these messages here not to hit on your work, but to express that there is an audience with other preferences/goals. It's Christmas soon, after all - consider this my public, unrealistic, idealistic wishlist. (Edit: And I apologize that my critical comment ranks rather high right now. I might believe that I'm not completely bonkers and there are other people that feel the same way, but it still sucks to see this kind of feedback on an announcement post)

Drdrdrq 11y ago

Isn't Chrome app a standalone app which doesn't run inside Chrome browser, but instead only uses its engine? I don't know anything about security or privacy implications of using this tech though, anyone care to comment?

finnn 11y ago
No, you're likely thinking of Electron[0]. A Chrome App[1] is a browser extension that tries to act more like a native app. [0]: http://electron.atom.io/ http://electron.atom.io/ [1]: https://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps https://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

plusquamperfekt 11y ago

> I tend to repeat the 'central server' and 'a phone number is not an address and not public information, it certainly is no identity' criticism. Your phone number is not your identity in Signal. If you change SIM cards then your friends won't notice and the app works as before. Signal is based on asym encryption - your private key effectively encodes your identity in combination with your public key. > And only if the first client is Android? There is no point in dwelling on that. Android and its syblings are the only potentially secure popular smartphone OSs. Apple and Microsoft OSs are fundamentally flawed in that regard.

darklajid 11y ago
We had a similar exchange earlier. If the phone number isn't my identity - what is the phone number for? I don't need a phone number to generate my key, do I? It seems, as far as I can follow from the outside, that phone numbers are used as namespace. Maybe 'identity' goes too far, but so far I understand that the number you register with is your - erm - user id? Help me out. If that's totally wrong, if I "didn't get it", I'd be glad to learn more. But .. then again: Why require a phone number (-> No standalone client on the desktop)? Thomas basically destroyed that security argument already, and I'd actually prefer a niche OS (FxOS, but I'm getting more and more into SailfishOS demos atm).
tptacek 11y ago
Approximately zero is the number of software security experts that would agree with that assessment of Android's security versus that of iOS. There are a lot of totally fine reasons (shakes fist) that OWS would start with Android; they might all have Android phones, they might have ideological problems with app store review, it might have just been an easier platform to build for. But yours isn't one of the valid reasons.
- plusquamperfekt 11y ago
  Huh? Apple and MS have a record of communicating in sharing data with US government - plus as companies providing closed source software they are likely to introduce backdoors ... also something you might have heard of since Snowden.

JetSetWilly 11y ago

I just found it unreliably slow. Principles are all good, but if I message my gf saying "see you at the bus stop in 20 minutes" and she doesn't receive the message for 2 hours, that's majorly annoying and it happened so often I had to leave it. The basic functionality isn't fit for purpose, for me.

bakhy 11y ago
are you sure it's Signal? cause i have this problem with my husband too, but it happens with Hangouts as well as with Signal. my best guess is that his android phone, a cheaper LG model, has limited resources and puts some services to sleep...
- JetSetWilly 11y ago
  Yes, because it happens on recent hardware (a 6s) and other messaging systems don't seem to have this issue at all under the same conditions. Most of the time it would work fine, but quite frequently messages would be sent (have left my device) but not appear on the receiving device for ages, so i can only assume that sometimes the infra couldn't keep up.
  - xorcist 11y ago
    Is there no acknowledgement of received messages? That seems somewhat of an oversight over unreliable third-party transports.
    - haffenloher 11y ago
      Yes, there is.
Certhas 11y ago
I used to have the problem but just trying it again now the situation has dramatically improved for me.
Symen 11y ago

akerro 11y ago

I feel the same but in a bit other way. They tied up everything very closely to google services and they tell me "we really care about your privacy so use our app that requires google play frameworks on your android device". Those are two completely different things, use gapps or opensystem apps? It's 100% no-go for me and the whole idea seems to be a bit sarcastic for me. It hurt me when they removed content encryption from TextSecure because "NSA cares about metadata not content", yea, but European agencies like GCHQ care about content not meta-data.

dTal 11y ago
You might find SMSSecure, the SMS-only TextSecure fork, useful.
f444fz 11y ago
Content encryption has not been removed. It never will.

OvermindDL1 11y ago

Sounds like Tox might be for you then.