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Contact Discovery is not seen as privacy invasive, I guess. It says, X has Signal, but that's it. So I see how it is, strictly speaking, broadcasting 'private'

Contact Discovery is not seen as privacy invasive, I guess. It says, X has Signal, but that's it. So I see how it is, strictly speaking, broadcasting 'private' information, but it is hard to care terribly. I'm far more concerned by the privacy of my conversations than the fact I at one point installed signal.

seemslegit 7y ago
See, there's an apparently archaic concept in software called user preference - they could ask people upon joining if they want to be contact-discoverable or not.
- eximius 7y ago
  And that's fair! It's not perfect. And, ignorantly, I would assume it'd be easy to add, so they probably should. But I can understand why this is a trade-off they'd make in terms of your comfort level (relatively rare to care about this) vs. massive use-ability and onboarding gains.
  - seemslegit 7y ago
    What you call "comfort level" is in fact the primary value proposition of a tool like signal and the fact that they have chosen to compromise on it to drive adoption is symptomatic of the many things wrong with the setting in which this decision was made. Not unlike calling out the EARNIT senators on using child abuse justifications in bad faith to promote the agenda of censorship and surveillance.
ape4 7y ago
But it means they have slurped all your contacts. How are they stored? Who are they shared with? etc
- ajconway 7y ago
  It's really not a secret https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/ https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/
- propinquity 7y ago
  The Signal App, which is open source, periodically sends truncated cryptographically hashed phone numbers to the Signal server, which is also open source. The server does not store the truncated hashes that the app sends to the server. So, they only temporarily have partial hashes which they do not store or share with anyone.
- eximius 7y ago
  The DO NOT slurp your contacts. They invented a way to do contact discovery in a secure way: https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/. From the article: "Using this service, Signal clients will be able to efficiently and scalably determine whether the contacts in their address book are Signal users without revealing the contacts in their address book to the Signal service." This is why Signal gets so much benefit of the doubt from the cryptography/security/privacy community. Their default approach to these problems is conservative in favor of the user until they can invent the technology needed to support a feature with security/privacy.
  - ape4 7y ago
    Thanks. That's actually great, I was wrong.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    > They invented a way to do contact discovery in a secure way: Their solution is to run contact discovery on a DRM Secure Enclave system. Ironic that their privacy solution is to use a technology that privacy advocates say is the spawn of Satan because it hands over control of your machine to Intel.

seemslegit 7y ago

See, there's an apparently archaic concept in software called user preference - they could ask people upon joining if they want to be contact-discoverable or not.

eximius 7y ago
And that's fair! It's not perfect. And, ignorantly, I would assume it'd be easy to add, so they probably should. But I can understand why this is a trade-off they'd make in terms of your comfort level (relatively rare to care about this) vs. massive use-ability and onboarding gains.
- seemslegit 7y ago
  What you call "comfort level" is in fact the primary value proposition of a tool like signal and the fact that they have chosen to compromise on it to drive adoption is symptomatic of the many things wrong with the setting in which this decision was made. Not unlike calling out the EARNIT senators on using child abuse justifications in bad faith to promote the agenda of censorship and surveillance.

ape4 7y ago

But it means they have slurped all your contacts. How are they stored? Who are they shared with? etc

ajconway 7y ago
It's really not a secret https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/ https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/
propinquity 7y ago
The Signal App, which is open source, periodically sends truncated cryptographically hashed phone numbers to the Signal server, which is also open source. The server does not store the truncated hashes that the app sends to the server. So, they only temporarily have partial hashes which they do not store or share with anyone.
eximius 7y ago
The DO NOT slurp your contacts. They invented a way to do contact discovery in a secure way: https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/. From the article: "Using this service, Signal clients will be able to efficiently and scalably determine whether the contacts in their address book are Signal users without revealing the contacts in their address book to the Signal service." This is why Signal gets so much benefit of the doubt from the cryptography/security/privacy community. Their default approach to these problems is conservative in favor of the user until they can invent the technology needed to support a feature with security/privacy.
- ape4 7y ago
  Thanks. That's actually great, I was wrong.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  > They invented a way to do contact discovery in a secure way: Their solution is to run contact discovery on a DRM Secure Enclave system. Ironic that their privacy solution is to use a technology that privacy advocates say is the spawn of Satan because it hands over control of your machine to Intel.