5 ms·

When will I be able to sign up without a phone number? The phone number requirement is ridiculous and makes true anonymity incredibly difficult.

verusma 9y ago
This. They had a (hopefully non-technical) justification for this but it's of course completely unnecessary. Your identity could just as easily be a username or a random key. If you need to share that identity you could always do it out of band. I tried to use Signal and even gave it permission to use my contacts when I installed it. Once it found the handful of people I know using it I disabled those permissions. To my surprise, the app refused to let me use it. That's when I uninstalled it and stopped recommending it to people. How they operate makes me think they're trying to build the illusion of security above all else (possibly with nefarious purposes?) or they're more concerned about driving up their user #s than they are about providing security. Despite what security consultants like to tell people, end to end encryption is not rocket science. If you trust the publicly available algorithms (if you don't then this is moot) then it's relatively straightforward to assemble a system that should be secure over the wire. Of course, that requires you to also trust that the app you're installing is using the same source as the one you vetted (or wrote) and that your device / computer hasn't been compromised somehow. Ditto the person you're talking to. You can trust the whole chain if you want but currently verifying it is impossible. I like to do a thought experiment about what an actually secure messaging system would look like. The only truly secure system is an air-gapped one. (Yes, there are ways to bridge the air gap if you're in the vicinity, but that's not the point.) How could you air gap a mobile phone? Well, you can't. What you could do is use a second phone with the radios physically disabled. You could then use this to encrypt your messages and then type those encrypted messages into email or SMS or whatever. This is a bit laborious so you could send the encrypted info to the second phone and to a second app that brokers these messages. You could use the analog ports to modem these messages back and forth. Assuming your ADC is just an ADC, the standard analog audio port should not be hackable in any way. This is a silly example but it's meant to illustrate a point. If you really have something to hide, an app isn't going to get your there. If you just want a little bit of privacy, you're better off with iMessage or whoever is offering end to end encryption. Signal is not a particularly good chat app and no, most of your friends aren't using it anyway. Obligatory: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2007/01/in_praise_of_securit.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2007/01/in_praise_o...
- ikawe 9y ago
  You've been able to use Signal-iOS without contact access for a while.
fattire 9y ago
I don't think anonymity is one of Signal's design goals-- privacy is. But fwiw there is also Wire Messenger, which looks to me to be a kind of Signal w/o the phone # requirement (you can use an email address). It claims to use the signal (axolotl double ratchet) algorithm for texts and video/audio uses webrtc https://wire.com/en/privacy/ https://wire.com/en/privacy/ with encryption and it's GPL'd. Beyond that I haven't used it so can't vouch for it. Anyone else got an opinion on this Swiss app? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wire https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wire
- unhammer 9y ago
  Anonymity is not the only reason for usernames though: People sometimes switch phone numbers, and some switch them more often than others (exchange/phd students going to different countries/, moving to different countries for new jobs etc). Re: Wire, I tried it back when it had video chat (one of the few options between iPhone and Android) and Signal didn't. But I found Wire to be too unstable to be really usable. That is to say, my family members quickly got annoyed and demanded I buy an iPhone. Signal video chat solved that issue :-)

verusma 9y ago

This. They had a (hopefully non-technical) justification for this but it's of course completely unnecessary. Your identity could just as easily be a username or a random key. If you need to share that identity you could always do it out of band. I tried to use Signal and even gave it permission to use my contacts when I installed it. Once it found the handful of people I know using it I disabled those permissions. To my surprise, the app refused to let me use it. That's when I uninstalled it and stopped recommending it to people. How they operate makes me think they're trying to build the illusion of security above all else (possibly with nefarious purposes?) or they're more concerned about driving up their user #s than they are about providing security. Despite what security consultants like to tell people, end to end encryption is not rocket science. If you trust the publicly available algorithms (if you don't then this is moot) then it's relatively straightforward to assemble a system that should be secure over the wire. Of course, that requires you to also trust that the app you're installing is using the same source as the one you vetted (or wrote) and that your device / computer hasn't been compromised somehow. Ditto the person you're talking to. You can trust the whole chain if you want but currently verifying it is impossible. I like to do a thought experiment about what an actually secure messaging system would look like. The only truly secure system is an air-gapped one. (Yes, there are ways to bridge the air gap if you're in the vicinity, but that's not the point.) How could you air gap a mobile phone? Well, you can't. What you could do is use a second phone with the radios physically disabled. You could then use this to encrypt your messages and then type those encrypted messages into email or SMS or whatever. This is a bit laborious so you could send the encrypted info to the second phone and to a second app that brokers these messages. You could use the analog ports to modem these messages back and forth. Assuming your ADC is just an ADC, the standard analog audio port should not be hackable in any way. This is a silly example but it's meant to illustrate a point. If you really have something to hide, an app isn't going to get your there. If you just want a little bit of privacy, you're better off with iMessage or whoever is offering end to end encryption. Signal is not a particularly good chat app and no, most of your friends aren't using it anyway. Obligatory: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2007/01/in_praise_of_securit.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2007/01/in_praise_o...

ikawe 9y ago
You've been able to use Signal-iOS without contact access for a while.

fattire 9y ago

I don't think anonymity is one of Signal's design goals-- privacy is. But fwiw there is also Wire Messenger, which looks to me to be a kind of Signal w/o the phone # requirement (you can use an email address). It claims to use the signal (axolotl double ratchet) algorithm for texts and video/audio uses webrtc https://wire.com/en/privacy/ https://wire.com/en/privacy/ with encryption and it's GPL'd. Beyond that I haven't used it so can't vouch for it. Anyone else got an opinion on this Swiss app? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wire https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wire

unhammer 9y ago
Anonymity is not the only reason for usernames though: People sometimes switch phone numbers, and some switch them more often than others (exchange/phd students going to different countries/, moving to different countries for new jobs etc). Re: Wire, I tried it back when it had video chat (one of the few options between iPhone and Android) and Signal didn't. But I found Wire to be too unstable to be really usable. That is to say, my family members quickly got annoyed and demanded I buy an iPhone. Signal video chat solved that issue :-)