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I think they've messed up badly with this update. I have several friends who want to get rid of Signal because they could not access their messages until they'v
by dessant 6y ago
I think they've messed up badly with this update. I have several friends who want to get rid of Signal because they could not access their messages until they've set up a PIN.
Imagine needing to configure and remember a PIN on the spot when you need to urgently read your messages.
- arsome 6y agoInteresting, mine keeps nagging me at the bottom of the screen every day, but hasn't forced it on me at all yet.
- sliken 6y agoI've lobbied for signal, and gotten friends and family to join. Most are annoyed by the PINs and some have left. Their handling of PINs seems quite contrary to their goal of pretty good security for the largest possible number of people. It's VERY frustrating to have your device asking for pins every time you use it. I'm trying to protect from attackers on the internet, not someone who is going to assault me. After all if they assault me for my phone they can assault me for my pin. Single devs need to read https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
- Skunkleton 6y agoThat's not what the PINs are for.
- scubbo 6y agoWhat are they for?
- dfabulich 6y agoRead the blog post, friend! They're for restoring your data to a new device.
- sliken 6y agoStill stupid, shouldn't they ask if I want that functionality? Not like it's going to be hard to brute force a user's PIN. They should explain what the pins is BEFORE they ask. What it looks like is you are going to be locked out of signal if you make a mistake. Not like the average signal user is watching the whisper systems blog.
- Skunkleton 6y ago> Not like it's going to be hard to brute force a user's PIN. I guess it depends on if you buy into SGX. Lots of people don't. > Still stupid Yeah, this isn't making anyone happy it seems. Still, they are a small organization and having configuration increases maintenance burden. As long as Signal keeps operating as non-commercial product, I will keep cutting them slack.
- moxie 6y ago> Still stupid, shouldn't they ask if I want that functionality? It's kind of a difficult thing to ask. "Do you want this app to work like every other app in the world in the ways you've come to expect?" If people were to simply reinstall Signal and find that all of their contacts were gone, all of their groups were gone, all of their block lists were gone, etc... they'd almost certainly be surprised. It's not a behavior anyone expects. Every other consumer messaging app in the world solves this by storing all of that information in plaintext on their servers. We're trying to do something privacy preserving instead, and have done a fair amount of engineering work to try to make it as frictionless as we possibly can. If you have ideas for how we can achieve the same ends with less friction, we're definitely interested in the feedback. > Not like it's going to be hard to brute force a user's PIN. Check out this blog post for more information about the technology: https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/ https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/
- KCUOJJQJ 6y agoCan the pin be 1111? I use a similar pin for the app Threema. Better than nothing I guess and easy to remember. (Also, after restarting the device I have to enter a complicated password.) Edit: Now I see. Signal wants to save data in the cloud. My Threema PIN is just for my device.