7 ms·

Privacy-focused messenger Signal is ready to go mainstream and take on WhatsApp

63 points by neverminder 7y ago

wyxuan 7y ago
The 50 million infusion happened in 2018. Why has it taken so long to scale up? Anyway, I don't think it can take on WhatsApp. If you look at the history of when signal succeeds and gains many users, it's only when WhatsApp is down. Which is not for very long, as it's so important that it goes back up pretty quickly.
tptacek 7y ago
Blogspam of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22326731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22326731 Extensively discussed already; this piece is literally just a summary of that one.
cyborch 7y ago
Let me know when it's ready to use without a phone number. As it is, I lose my identity if I switch phone numbers (say, I move to another country). Even worse, someone else might get my old identity when my old phone number is recycled.
- kome 7y ago
  For me is just mind-blowing that "secure" apps, run only on devices which are basically a security nightmare.
  - _wldu 7y ago
    Signal Desktop runs on standard linux systems.
- alpn 7y ago
  This. Is there an actual technical limitation preventing Signal from offering a one-field signup, whereby one would simply enter a self generated public key?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - maqp 7y ago
    There's no technical limitation, but read this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22357948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22357948) comment to understand why Signal did what they did. Your SIM card stores your contact list across devices. With usernames, your phone's contact list doesn't work anymore. You need a persistence, i.e. cloud backups, to store the contact list first. This is in the works (https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/ https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/). Expect to see user names once that's done. The nice thing is the persistence can also remember identity keys, fingerprint and their verification statuses, and even group membership status -- so it'll mean much more convenient use once it's ready.
- anarchodev 7y ago
  You could register it with a voip number. This doesn't entirely mitigate the problem, but at least you'd have more digital control over what happens to that number (and can pretty much be sure you won't lose it unless you want to). If you already have it registered to a "real" number on your cell phone, there are processes for porting that number to google voice.
  - ossguy 7y ago
    Or to a service like https://jmp.chat/ https://jmp.chat/ that allows you to signup anonymously.
skrowl 7y ago
Signal has MAJOR UX problems when you have several devices (which is fairly normal for mainstream users). Try using the same account multiple computers, smartphone, tablet / chromebook at the same time. It's painful. Compared to Telegram (which is also privacy-focused and NOT owned by Facebook like WhatsApp is) that simply works, I'm not sure what Signal brings to the mainstream table. The people behind the predecessor to Signal were somewhat successful in a disinformation / FUD campaign against Telegram's cryptography early on, but 0 POC exploits have ever been released. Telegram even upgraded their cryptography to alleviate some of the concerns - https://core.telegram.org/mtproto https://core.telegram.org/mtproto . They are now recognized as IND-CCA secure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciphertext_indistinguishability#IND-CCA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciphertext_indistinguishabilit.... To be mainstream, you have to have mainstream usability. Signal does not (at least not right now).
- throwaway123x2 7y ago
  whatsapp is also impossible to use on >1 mobile devices.
- JensRex 7y ago
  I took a look at Signal again a few days ago, and their desktop "app" is still a 323 MB Electron tire fire.
  - cmiles74 7y ago
    I don't have any love of Electron but this seems to be how the majority of messaging products are targeting the desktop. Slack works the same way... I guess it seems a bit unfair to use this as a criticism for Signal in particular; they are already fighting an uphill battle UI-wise. To my mind, since the client is about as frustrating as Google Hangout was, I'm willing to accept it as good enough.
  - maqp 7y ago
    Thank goodness there's the highly optimized Telegram Desktop client that's not a tire fire since it has the secure end-to-end encryption for both group chats and one-on-....ahahahahahahahahahaha
bmarquez 7y ago
I'm looking forward to Signal introducing basic features like iOS message backup (which exists in the Android version).
- otachack 7y ago
  As soon as Apple gives access to that data (they won't)
Funes- 7y ago
I'm personally against using any instant messaging app, even more so if it's on a smartphone rather than on a desktop computer. I don't care how private they are. Why? Well, I think it's an inefficient communication tool, and thus a huge waste of time. Modern instant messaging applications work by interrupting people and being interrupted by them constantly throughout the day, since there's no way to turn it off—in contrast, MSN Messenger didn't allow for offline messaging until 2005; most of the time you found yourself in front of the computer with the program opened if somebody sent you a message, ready to engage in conversation instead of dealing with anything else. Of course, you can turn the notifications off and check messages at a specific time every day, but good luck with that! If nested conversations without a subject attached to them, no character limit, and no formal way of telling when they either start or end aren't already put off enough and stretched out unnecessarily, imagine setting a time restriction to your responses. Imagine setting up a meeting or a date: as cumbersome and as long as it takes as it is, you'd spend a week trying to meet with somebody. Believe me, I've been there. I've tried it all: installing WhatsApp on a virtual machine with Android_x86 and only using it at night didn't solve a thing; still, a phone call was always faster and much more efficient in dealing with anything you can conceive. However, most people didn't want to pick up the phone; texting, on the other hand? I'd receive texts from people wanting to start full conversations there, to which they would respond every two or three hours. How can anyone do anything efficiently or be productive enough at work, or even enjoy hobbies, while doing that? I know I'm alone on this one, but it's really frustrating seeing how something that isolates us and separates us from our own lives, immediate environments, and thoughts will probably never stop growing. End of the rant.
- papreclip 7y ago
  > How can anyone do anything efficiently or be productive enough at work, or even enjoy hobbies, while doing that? by replying every 2 or 3 hours, when you're waiting in the elevator, or have some other idle time to fill >you can turn the notifications off and check messages at a specific time every day, but good luck with that some people simply ignore their notifications until they're ready to deal with them. they don't toggle some setting on their device, they simply choose to ignore the whole device. it varies from person-to-person and you might just not be personally suited to this kind of technology. personally, i read every email i get as soon as i get it, but i realize this is not the norm.
6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
I love and hate signal. The tech seems good, but the UX has some real frustrations. Group chats are the most glaringly frustrating part in my mind.
- josh2600 7y ago
  That’s because group chat in an encrypted messenger with good ux is an unsolved cryptographic research problem. Everyone else just punts on it. I get why that’s unsatisfying from the user perspective, but it’s absolutely necessary from the perspective of maintaining user trust over time. Signal has a plan to fix it but we’ll have to see if they can actually implement their new groups solution.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
    What? No it’s not an unsolved crypto research problem. Signal supports group chats just fine, it’s just that’s it’s hidden away behind a couple extra clicks and you have to name them that inordinately annoys me compared to imessage where you just type the recipients out all in one place. It makes it feel like you’re Setting Up A Group instead of just bullshitting with friends.
    - josh2600 7y ago
      You misunderstand this problem. Doing group chat where you do a massive rekeying of all participants every time someone joins doesn’t scale, but it is secure. Signal doesn’t practically support large groups like Telegram does (although telegram is unencrypted as a result). I can assure you that large secure groups with strong cryptographic guarantees and evolving membership lists is unsolved.
      - 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
        Nah, you misunderstand the complaint. The UX is annoying if you just want to message your friends Alice and Bob. On other platforms it's trivial. On those, you type alice into the new message bar, click her contact, type bob into the address bar, click his contact, then write your message and hit send. On signal, you have to create a new group first. I'm not talking about wanting to make the kinds of groups with dynamic membership like you're talking about.
glogla 7y ago
Signal started lately (maybe it's AB tested and it happens at differet times to different oeople) doing the annoying "add your name" thing, where you get askedfor your name pretty much every time, and you can only caugh it up, or say "remind me later", not"no thanks". How is this scummy dark pattern good for privacy is beyond me. If it werent for my obe privacy nut friend, I would have stoppped using it.
revicon 7y ago
Started a HackerNews group chat on Signal to test it out. Ping me your signal phone # to hngroupchat@mattcrampton.com and I'll invite you to the group.
- pixxel 7y ago
  Serious question: Is this the only way to invite users to a Signal group? Couple of concerns here; you might use google to host your email for all I know and I’m not inclined to help google update my shadow profile. Also, giving my phone number to random dudes seems ridiculous given what we’re ultimately trying to achieve here. BTW I’m not being snarky towards you, it just reads that way :P
  - maqp 7y ago
    It's not what Signal is built for. If you want to join public chat rooms, you can use Telegram equally securely. E2EE never hurts in the case of public groups, but since you're not able to verify none of the group members are malicious, and logging and leaking your (and everyone else's) comments to every bad actor, it doesn't matter. Your only protection is anonymity, but that's something not even Telegram offers by default: This has lead to speculations about attacks where the Chinese cyber army has performed massive reverse look-ups of Hong Kong citizens' phone numbers, by storing what TelCo has in it's database / what IMSI catchers / hacked towers see, and adding them as contacts. This by default reveals Telegram user's username to the attacker. You can disable this by opting in, but very few do.
infinity0 7y ago
> Enabling group administration was also a hard feat, as Signal has to give administrators the ability to add and remove members without its servers knowing who's part of the conversation. I was chatting with Trevor Perrin about abstract crypto relating to this when he was presumably working on this, and never got the chance to ask him - even if the group crypto hides this information, the Signal server still has to physically deliver the messages to the correct people in the group, whose phone numbers are all known by the server, so isn't this exercise a bit pointless? Or are there long-term plans to drop the critical reliance on phone numbers?
- maqp 7y ago
  "Or are there long-term plans to drop the critical reliance on phone numbers?" Yes https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-introducing-usernames/9157 https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-introducing-usern...
  - infinity0 7y ago
    That's a good start. I forgot to add though, to actually make group membership private for real-world practical purposes, you have to achieve all of the following: 1. group crypto can't give away the identities 2. your identity system can't give away the actual people 3. your distribution system can't give away the locations of those people It's a hard problem, nobody in the world has done it yet. Signal seem now to have some concrete thing for (1), by your link they are supposedly working on (2), but (3) is also needed.
A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
Eh, I want to like signal. I really do. But it does not play nice with Blokada ( though that is an easy fix ). My tech illiterate parent was unable to use it ( when compared to whatsapp ). I am kinda done with whatsapp so I finally broke down and added international plan. I am annoyed, but I can't really blame my parent.

63 points by neverminder 7y ago

The 50 million infusion happened in 2018. Why has it taken so long to scale up? Anyway, I don't think it can take on WhatsApp. If you look at the history of when signal succeeds and gains many users, it's only when WhatsApp is down. Which is not for very long, as it's so important that it goes back up pretty quickly.

tptacek 7y ago

Blogspam of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22326731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22326731 Extensively discussed already; this piece is literally just a summary of that one.

cyborch 7y ago

Let me know when it's ready to use without a phone number. As it is, I lose my identity if I switch phone numbers (say, I move to another country). Even worse, someone else might get my old identity when my old phone number is recycled.

kome 7y ago
For me is just mind-blowing that "secure" apps, run only on devices which are basically a security nightmare.
- _wldu 7y ago
  Signal Desktop runs on standard linux systems.
alpn 7y ago
This. Is there an actual technical limitation preventing Signal from offering a one-field signup, whereby one would simply enter a self generated public key?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- maqp 7y ago
  There's no technical limitation, but read this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22357948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22357948) comment to understand why Signal did what they did. Your SIM card stores your contact list across devices. With usernames, your phone's contact list doesn't work anymore. You need a persistence, i.e. cloud backups, to store the contact list first. This is in the works (https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/ https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/). Expect to see user names once that's done. The nice thing is the persistence can also remember identity keys, fingerprint and their verification statuses, and even group membership status -- so it'll mean much more convenient use once it's ready.
anarchodev 7y ago
You could register it with a voip number. This doesn't entirely mitigate the problem, but at least you'd have more digital control over what happens to that number (and can pretty much be sure you won't lose it unless you want to). If you already have it registered to a "real" number on your cell phone, there are processes for porting that number to google voice.
- ossguy 7y ago
  Or to a service like https://jmp.chat/ https://jmp.chat/ that allows you to signup anonymously.

skrowl 7y ago

Signal has MAJOR UX problems when you have several devices (which is fairly normal for mainstream users). Try using the same account multiple computers, smartphone, tablet / chromebook at the same time. It's painful. Compared to Telegram (which is also privacy-focused and NOT owned by Facebook like WhatsApp is) that simply works, I'm not sure what Signal brings to the mainstream table. The people behind the predecessor to Signal were somewhat successful in a disinformation / FUD campaign against Telegram's cryptography early on, but 0 POC exploits have ever been released. Telegram even upgraded their cryptography to alleviate some of the concerns - https://core.telegram.org/mtproto https://core.telegram.org/mtproto . They are now recognized as IND-CCA secure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciphertext_indistinguishability#IND-CCA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciphertext_indistinguishabilit.... To be mainstream, you have to have mainstream usability. Signal does not (at least not right now).

throwaway123x2 7y ago
whatsapp is also impossible to use on >1 mobile devices.
JensRex 7y ago
I took a look at Signal again a few days ago, and their desktop "app" is still a 323 MB Electron tire fire.
- cmiles74 7y ago
  I don't have any love of Electron but this seems to be how the majority of messaging products are targeting the desktop. Slack works the same way... I guess it seems a bit unfair to use this as a criticism for Signal in particular; they are already fighting an uphill battle UI-wise. To my mind, since the client is about as frustrating as Google Hangout was, I'm willing to accept it as good enough.
- maqp 7y ago
  Thank goodness there's the highly optimized Telegram Desktop client that's not a tire fire since it has the secure end-to-end encryption for both group chats and one-on-....ahahahahahahahahahaha

bmarquez 7y ago

I'm looking forward to Signal introducing basic features like iOS message backup (which exists in the Android version).

otachack 7y ago
As soon as Apple gives access to that data (they won't)

Funes- 7y ago

I'm personally against using any instant messaging app, even more so if it's on a smartphone rather than on a desktop computer. I don't care how private they are. Why? Well, I think it's an inefficient communication tool, and thus a huge waste of time. Modern instant messaging applications work by interrupting people and being interrupted by them constantly throughout the day, since there's no way to turn it off—in contrast, MSN Messenger didn't allow for offline messaging until 2005; most of the time you found yourself in front of the computer with the program opened if somebody sent you a message, ready to engage in conversation instead of dealing with anything else. Of course, you can turn the notifications off and check messages at a specific time every day, but good luck with that! If nested conversations without a subject attached to them, no character limit, and no formal way of telling when they either start or end aren't already put off enough and stretched out unnecessarily, imagine setting a time restriction to your responses. Imagine setting up a meeting or a date: as cumbersome and as long as it takes as it is, you'd spend a week trying to meet with somebody. Believe me, I've been there. I've tried it all: installing WhatsApp on a virtual machine with Android_x86 and only using it at night didn't solve a thing; still, a phone call was always faster and much more efficient in dealing with anything you can conceive. However, most people didn't want to pick up the phone; texting, on the other hand? I'd receive texts from people wanting to start full conversations there, to which they would respond every two or three hours. How can anyone do anything efficiently or be productive enough at work, or even enjoy hobbies, while doing that? I know I'm alone on this one, but it's really frustrating seeing how something that isolates us and separates us from our own lives, immediate environments, and thoughts will probably never stop growing. End of the rant.

papreclip 7y ago
> How can anyone do anything efficiently or be productive enough at work, or even enjoy hobbies, while doing that? by replying every 2 or 3 hours, when you're waiting in the elevator, or have some other idle time to fill >you can turn the notifications off and check messages at a specific time every day, but good luck with that some people simply ignore their notifications until they're ready to deal with them. they don't toggle some setting on their device, they simply choose to ignore the whole device. it varies from person-to-person and you might just not be personally suited to this kind of technology. personally, i read every email i get as soon as i get it, but i realize this is not the norm.

6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago

I love and hate signal. The tech seems good, but the UX has some real frustrations. Group chats are the most glaringly frustrating part in my mind.

josh2600 7y ago
That’s because group chat in an encrypted messenger with good ux is an unsolved cryptographic research problem. Everyone else just punts on it. I get why that’s unsatisfying from the user perspective, but it’s absolutely necessary from the perspective of maintaining user trust over time. Signal has a plan to fix it but we’ll have to see if they can actually implement their new groups solution.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  What? No it’s not an unsolved crypto research problem. Signal supports group chats just fine, it’s just that’s it’s hidden away behind a couple extra clicks and you have to name them that inordinately annoys me compared to imessage where you just type the recipients out all in one place. It makes it feel like you’re Setting Up A Group instead of just bullshitting with friends.
  - josh2600 7y ago
    You misunderstand this problem. Doing group chat where you do a massive rekeying of all participants every time someone joins doesn’t scale, but it is secure. Signal doesn’t practically support large groups like Telegram does (although telegram is unencrypted as a result). I can assure you that large secure groups with strong cryptographic guarantees and evolving membership lists is unsolved.
    - 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
      Nah, you misunderstand the complaint. The UX is annoying if you just want to message your friends Alice and Bob. On other platforms it's trivial. On those, you type alice into the new message bar, click her contact, type bob into the address bar, click his contact, then write your message and hit send. On signal, you have to create a new group first. I'm not talking about wanting to make the kinds of groups with dynamic membership like you're talking about.

glogla 7y ago

Signal started lately (maybe it's AB tested and it happens at differet times to different oeople) doing the annoying "add your name" thing, where you get askedfor your name pretty much every time, and you can only caugh it up, or say "remind me later", not"no thanks". How is this scummy dark pattern good for privacy is beyond me. If it werent for my obe privacy nut friend, I would have stoppped using it.

revicon 7y ago

Started a HackerNews group chat on Signal to test it out. Ping me your signal phone # to hngroupchat@mattcrampton.com and I'll invite you to the group.

pixxel 7y ago
Serious question: Is this the only way to invite users to a Signal group? Couple of concerns here; you might use google to host your email for all I know and I’m not inclined to help google update my shadow profile. Also, giving my phone number to random dudes seems ridiculous given what we’re ultimately trying to achieve here. BTW I’m not being snarky towards you, it just reads that way :P
- maqp 7y ago
  It's not what Signal is built for. If you want to join public chat rooms, you can use Telegram equally securely. E2EE never hurts in the case of public groups, but since you're not able to verify none of the group members are malicious, and logging and leaking your (and everyone else's) comments to every bad actor, it doesn't matter. Your only protection is anonymity, but that's something not even Telegram offers by default: This has lead to speculations about attacks where the Chinese cyber army has performed massive reverse look-ups of Hong Kong citizens' phone numbers, by storing what TelCo has in it's database / what IMSI catchers / hacked towers see, and adding them as contacts. This by default reveals Telegram user's username to the attacker. You can disable this by opting in, but very few do.

infinity0 7y ago

> Enabling group administration was also a hard feat, as Signal has to give administrators the ability to add and remove members without its servers knowing who's part of the conversation. I was chatting with Trevor Perrin about abstract crypto relating to this when he was presumably working on this, and never got the chance to ask him - even if the group crypto hides this information, the Signal server still has to physically deliver the messages to the correct people in the group, whose phone numbers are all known by the server, so isn't this exercise a bit pointless? Or are there long-term plans to drop the critical reliance on phone numbers?

maqp 7y ago
"Or are there long-term plans to drop the critical reliance on phone numbers?" Yes https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-introducing-usernames/9157 https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-introducing-usern...
- infinity0 7y ago
  That's a good start. I forgot to add though, to actually make group membership private for real-world practical purposes, you have to achieve all of the following: 1. group crypto can't give away the identities 2. your identity system can't give away the actual people 3. your distribution system can't give away the locations of those people It's a hard problem, nobody in the world has done it yet. Signal seem now to have some concrete thing for (1), by your link they are supposedly working on (2), but (3) is also needed.

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago

Eh, I want to like signal. I really do. But it does not play nice with Blokada ( though that is an easy fix ). My tech illiterate parent was unable to use it ( when compared to whatsapp ). I am kinda done with whatsapp so I finally broke down and added international plan. I am annoyed, but I can't really blame my parent.