11 ms·

Improving first impressions on Signal

129 points by feross 5y ago

tandav 5y ago
Still requiring SIM, no go if you care about privacy
asethos 5y ago
Signal's message requests is a major selling point for me. I recently created a Signal account after having a bad experience in which someone used my phone number to harass me with SMS/calls (every time, from a different VOIP number). It's frustrating that, even in this era, there is no good way to filter out malicious actors from SMS/call. P.S. You can sign up with Signal via a VOIP number to avoid sharing your real phone number. See: https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/signal-tutorial-second-phone-number/ https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/signal-tutorial-second-p...
- dheera 5y ago
  Yes, I do this. I really wish they and everyone else would stop using phone number as an ID and use an alphanumeric ID. Really, I don't want to give out a phone number to everyone.
  - johnisgood 5y ago
    Exactly. How hard can it be? It would make it way more secure for almost no effort. I would use Signal if it did not require a phone number or an e-mail address (whichever it requires).
    - dheera 5y ago
      I'm okay with it requiring an e-mail address, that's easier to be universally accessible, as long as your e-mail provider is sane and doesn't require SMS confirmation to login. Phone numbers, for most people, only work within a certain part of the world and aren't easily accessible worldwide.
      - johnisgood 5y ago
        The reason I am not okay with it is that it is usually tied to your person in one way or another. Have you tried getting an e-mail while using Tor? Next to impossible. Plus, it is unnecessary really. You can use nicknames or say, a generated UUID of some sort, with perhaps a QR code for easy copying.
        zrth 5y ago
        crating a new yandex email account works nicely via tor for me
        johnisgood 5y ago
        I will check. I would say that it works... for now. :P It is not something we should rely on, I think.
- alerighi 5y ago
  It's complicated and can be expensive. Also people that has you real phone number cannot contact you on Signal, so you have to have two accounts, one with your real number to chat with your contacts and another one with the fake one to share with strangers that you don't trust, and as far as I know the Signal app doesn't support two account (yes on Android there are ways to have two instances of the app, on iOS you can't). To me Telegram is superior to Signal because it gives you both options, use your phone numbers with people that already have you in the contacts, and don't share your number with strangers in a group.
  - stereoradonc 5y ago
    Completely agree. Telegram is far superior to any other platform out there. Balance of privacy and security, by default.
    - bryans 5y ago
      How can you say that when Telegram's end-to-end encryption is disabled by default, and you need to go out of your way to create a secret chat? Their default is the opposite of secure.
      - johnisgood 5y ago
        And again, there is no E2EE on desktop. Telegram looks nice, and it ends there.
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      Briar is far superior. Yes, there is support for desktop as well, but it is under heavy development. For phones: Briar For desktop: Ricochet Yes, I get it, Ricochet lacks a lot of goodies Telegram has, but having stickers != secure. For secure chatting only, Ricochet does the job. No one will even know that you are using it. :)
      - GekkePrutser 5y ago
        > No one will even know that you are using it. :) Apart from all the red flags you're raising by using tor though.. The problem with tor is that it's associated with a lot of malicious stuff. The same way that IRC was for a while. Using it on a VPS for example was forbidden at many providers. Though since the rise of Freenode (and its fall and re-emergence as Libera) it has re-established itself as a platform for serious communication. Though this kind of legitimate use is exactly what Tor needs to get out of the "dark" corner in many people's eyes, I do think it's there at the moment.
- slownews45 5y ago
  I've not had this problem with iMessage really. Are you SURE its not possible to block out bad actors on messaging?
  - sneak 5y ago
    Apple keeps detailed metadata records of who sends messages to whom on iMessage, when, and how often. Signal does not. Apple backs up iMessage plaintext contents to Apple, via non-e2e iCloud Backup, bypassing iMessage's end to end encryption. Signal does not.
    - slownews45 5y ago
      My point is whatever approach apple is taking, I'm not getting a lot of spam on iMessage, and the one time I did it was pretty easy to mark as spam if I remember.
  - asethos 5y ago
    iMesssage allows you to filter out bad actors -- but raw SMS (green text message) does not. I was getting a few SMS messages a day, each from a different phone number, likely with a service like TextNow.com
ISL 5y ago
Is it strictly-true that anti-spam algorithms must be hidden to be effective? It would seem that initially, spammers would have the upper hand, but in the long run, coordinated and open effort against spammers has the potential to pay off. Furthermore, to have a closed algorithm that cuts off the ability for people to communicate opens the door to institutionalized censorship -- designating a political opponent's communication as spam could limit their ability to be heard.
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  > Is it strictly-true that anti-spam algorithms must be hidden to be effective? Can't answer that but there were, for a long time, services that would run your "targeted emails" through spamassassin et al for you and give you advice on how to tweak them to lower the resultant score.
- Arnt 5y ago
  I've fought spam in other contexts and found that to be true. A change stopped spam until spammers learned what the change was, which made them adapt. The adaption might not be perfect, but it would happen, so prolonging the blocked period was essential. If one can do something that's effective and that the spammers don't understand for months, that's great. If they can spam for days and then blocked for a longer period and that repeats, they'll go away and attack an easier target instead (well, some of them will look back later). Let me try an argument other than "it's been my experience", though. Suppose that it's not true. In that case, the anti-spam filter provides a publicly visible definition of spam in its code, and it's one that isn't grounded in the recipients' opinions. If the filter is to be effective, spammers must not be able to adapt their behaviour in a way that users consider spam but isn't according to the definition. Many people have tried to provide such a definition since 1995 and AIUI all have failed. I think the persisten failure indicates that it's extremely unlikely that one can be found, and therefore it's extremely unlikely that a publicly visible spam filter can be as effective as one that can be updated in secret.
  - correct_horse 5y ago
    Do you think an eventually open style spam filter could work? One where the implemntation is released say 2 years after it was first written (including modifications)
wpietri 5y ago
This is great! I haven't ever received Signal spam but have been getting say 5 junk SMS and 15 junk calls each week. They must be doing something right.
Canada 5y ago
Not looking forward to this... I use bots and I bet this will make them stop working at some inconvenient time. I wish I could put up collateral, say stablecoin in a smart contract, where Signal can ban my account and keep the money if I abuse, but otherwise do not break my automation.
- awiuerqwoieru 5y ago
  Why are you not using elements?
  - Canada 5y ago
    Have definitely considered this. Running your own matrix server definitely solves the spam problem, and element has some cool looking plugin featues that go beyond simple chat bot... Just have been using Signal for many years already, find it very convenient on mobile, and already put quite a bit of effort into my bot for it.
- kijiki 5y ago
  Unless your bots are doing things that get their messages reported by recipients, this shouldn't affect you at all.
  - Canada 5y ago
    Hope you're right. I only create groups and add my approximately 10 users to. The bot posts events in a group and also takes action based on commands users can say in group. I used to have an onboading process where my bot would message a user to ask if it's ok to be added to the group.. the purpose being for the user to reply so the bot can learn the safety number. Recent changes kinda broke that.
MaxGanzII 5y ago
Signal was superb for a long time, and then received a hefty chunk of funding, and, although I may be wrong, has declined since then, and in fact jumped the shark about a year ago. They attempted ever more forcefully to make users to set a PIN to protect server-side state; it started with a dialog at the bottom of the screen, obscuring about 20% of the user list, which could not be dimissed, and then after a few weeks progressed to the a full page dialog, which could not be dismissed - rendering the app unusable. All you saw upon starting was the full page dialog demanding you set a PIN to continue using Signal. I did not want any server-side state, and so did not set a PIN, and stopped using Signal. After a few weeks, the full-page dialog went away, and I found I could use Signal again. Signal actually blocked usage of the app to force users to adopt unwanted new functionality. It's hard to imagine any app doing well with such mis-management. I opened a thread discussing the problem on their support/public discussion forum, which was deleted. I also at first opened a bug report on Git, before I understood it was all intentional, this was also deleted. Since this experience, I've regarded Signal as on the way out, but it's still the best there is right now.
- leevlad 5y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe your comment is misguided. The PIN is a security option that prevents a SIM-swapping attacker from registering a new device under your phone number unless they know the PIN. You can opt out of it (and it might be opt-in to begin with). You can also easily opt out of PIN reminders. Both of these options are in Settings -> Account. As for server state - my understanding is that Signal attempts to be zero-knowledge overall, but they definitely store some state on the server. I believe it's encrypted using your private key that's not backed up to the server. Setting the PIN does not change that. Server state comment aside, it seems your main complaint is about a pop-up PIN entry UI that can be opted out of? I get that it might seem annoying, but it feels like a fairly weak criticism of a messaging platform, certainly not one that should warrant an impression that Signal is "on the way out"?
  - bilal4hmed 5y ago
    My complaint with them is the whole thing with mobilecoin. They hid that integration for a year, by not pushing server updates and when the news hit, they promised to do an AMA explaining it all. Its been months since that has happened and the AMA never happened. Moxies involvement is very muddy and never clarified, it was a pump n dump at best.https://amycastor.com/2021/04/07/signal-adopts-mobilecoin-a-crypto-project-linked-to-its-own-creator-moxie-marlinspike/ https://amycastor.com/2021/04/07/signal-adopts-mobilecoin-a-... That incident, they lost a lot of respect for me.
noja 5y ago
Great, but... Please let people allow Signal to automatically save their media to their photo roll (or whatever ios calls it). The number of people I have met who require this and left Signal _after starting to use it_ is astonishing.
- dewey 5y ago
  Do you think that's really the reason they are abandoning it? I think the bigger issue is probably that most of their friends are not on there and they use it less frequently until they abandon it.
  - noja 5y ago
    They abandoned it for two reasons: the reason above (automatic saving of family photos doesn't exist), and notifications not showing up.
- csydas 5y ago
  This surprises me greatly, as it's my biggest annoyance with WhatsApp and Google Hangouts or whatever they call it now (I've not yet accepted the new app, so it still calls itself hangouts, but clearly is using the new chat app backend...) I despise that it shows up in my main photos whenever someone sends a photo/gif/vid on these apps. Telegram segregates its local storage to a separate folder that Android doesn't seem to grab for the photo-roll and I want it this way; my photoroll should only be __my__ pictures, not random stuff my friends send me. I talk to different people on different apps in very different ways; the ways I joke with my best friends is absolutely not appropriate for the ways I talk with the older people in my life, and vice versa. And it's absolutely not about me testing these waters; that's not for an App/OS to decide, that's for me to decide, and mixing these photos into one central location makes it more annoying and precarious for me to accidentally tap and share something I never meant to because the App/OS saved it to a central location that it never should have. I don't even agree with "give people the option"; photocell/gallery/whatever are for __my pictures__. Downloads are for just that; Downloads. Apps should stay away from the pre-defined user space and put it in correctly named locations. I realize I'm "reeeeee-ing" here, but it's honestly a huge pet peeve of mine to see all the photos from the chat apps I use to keep in touch with a small handful of people dump themselves into a user space that isn't theirs. Telegram does it right, and apparently Signal does too -- I cannot understand why other chat-apps feel the need to behave otherwise; finding said photos is a matter of a single system call, so it's not like discoverability is a challenge for them. The users __will learn__, it's not hard to summon the file manager even with locked down permissions.
Waterluvian 5y ago
Edit: I’m out of date for most of this. Way to go Signal team! See comments below my complainy post. Forcing me to recite my PIN every few weeks is one of the most irritating UX I’ve seen. I’m sure there’s some smart engineer explanation in terms of cryptography and being unable to recover it if lost. But just let me disable it if I’m okay losing my entire account if I forget it. Also last time I checked the binding of a phone number to Signal was really bad. I had a friend abandon Signal and I could never sms them ever again.
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  Your last paragraph provides an insight I hadn't had; that is a serious problem. I personally appreciate the PIN repetition, as it encouraged me to use a code I had not used before, since I knew If be reminded to practice it now and then.
- gdrift 5y ago
  To send an SMS to a signal contact, press and hold the send button then from the popup select `Insecure SMS`.
  - Waterluvian 5y ago
    Cool! Is there a way to say “always use SMS because this signal contact isn’t on signal anymore”
    - Aulig 5y ago
      It looks to me like it's a per contact switch, so I think that's what you want, yea :)
    - girzel 5y ago
      When you stop using signal, you can log in to the signal website and say "I'm no longer using Signal"; that will solve the problem with your Signal-using contacts. I just checked and it looks life you have to deregister your account from within the Signal app (ie, can't uninstall first). I'm pretty sure it used to be more lenient: I remember friends being able to deregister their numbers after the fact.
modeless 5y ago
Just got a new phone and migrating Signal was a total disaster. The first thing I did was login to the new phone which is apparently the wrong thing to do because you lose all your old messages and there's no option to import after you login. You have to logout but there is no logout. Gotta uninstall and reinstall, or clear app data. Next I tried the account migration feature which requires using both phones simultaneously, hope you didn't erase your old phone yet. But it doesn't work anyway, it's just broken. So after failing at that several times, then I had to manually make a backup on the old phone, write down a 20 digit numeric code that's only displayed once on screen, transfer the backup file manually, type the code on the new phone, and then it logged me in but silently failed to import the backup. Had to uninstall again and did the exact same steps again and then it finally worked. What a travesty. Security shouldn't come with this kind of UX disaster.
- LogonType10 5y ago
  Sounds like you footgunned yourself. When starting Signal for the first time it gives the option to register OR migrate old account. There's no UI in the world that can totally protect users from themselves.
  - gugagore 5y ago
    That's only one part of the struggle that was mentioned. Even when using the migration feature, the comment reported it not working, and needing to manually transfer the backup file.
- rlpb 5y ago
  I recently moved phones and had the opposite experience. The Signal migration went very smoothly. Moving WhatsApp did not. I ended up managing to do it but not before about five attempts, each of which made me reauth my phone number and I hit rate limiting, etc.
- pocketlim 5y ago
  Recently got a new phone and the transition was super smooth. Tried to open Signal on the new phone, it somehow knew that I needed to transfer my backup, asked me to scan a QR code and keep the phones close together, a minute or so later, and done. Signal logged me out on the older device when it was finished. I've learned this lesson before though. Always keep your old phone around while transitioning to a new device in case you need to pull anything off of it.
myself248 5y ago
These all seem like useful changes, but I've never received spam over Signal. I'm glad that solves a problem for someone. What I have received were creepy messages from long-lost acquaintances who had been suddenly reminded, by virtue of my having installed the Signal app, that I existed and that I was attending a security-focused event at the time. And last I heard, Signal was adamantly opposed to removing these notifications. That's a big problem, IMHO.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  They usually oppose that because it helps them build engagement. People discovering each other helps increase app usage. I don't really like it either but all the other big players do this and it does really help. If signal doesn't it'll be even harder to get decent marketshare. There's this weird situation where fighting something means adopting some of their tactics even if you don't agree with them, otherwise it's not viable to compete. I think Signal is still better than eg WhatsApp but they are pretty similar in some ways because less privacy-sensitive users expect certain features like auto discovery. And without them it'll always remain a fringe thing.
jakecopp 5y ago
> To keep Signal a free global communication service without spam, we must depart from our totally-open posture and develop one piece of the server in private: a system for detecting and disrupting spam campaigns. Interesting. Matrix solves this problem by not associating a username with a phone number or email address (unless you opt in to). Does anyone have views on if this will work into the future? I'm moved ~90 of my friends onto Matrix (along with plenty of group chats), and most of them quite like the Element [1] app (though there are rough edges on iOS I'm hearing). [1]: https://element.io/ https://element.io/
- vlmutolo 5y ago
  How does not requiring a phone number help fight spam?
  - jtriangle 5y ago
    phone numbers are all well leaked and accounted for at this point, and it's trivial for spammers to build a list of 'hot' phone numbers to try to scam with.
Tistron 5y ago
Is there a reason, when they have control of the client software and the protocol, that they don't introduce computational cost to establishing contact? Like, if I send a message to a particular number, and their client receives a message from me for the first time, it responds with "prove that it's worth it for you to message me: find an `n` character string that together with `random string` hashes to 5 leading zeroes", or something like that. Somehow I imagine that doing a few seconds of computation per initiated first message is unproblematic, but doing it for thousands or millions of numbers starts to be a problem. Why is this not done?
- tptacek 5y ago
  If the server is mediating that proof-of-work system, then the server is building a list of contacts, and not doing that is the #2 goal for the whole Signal project. If the client is doing it, you need to come up with a system that is resilient to people using a bunch of different devices, getting new phones, etc. This is a theme about building Signal: they're doing everything on hard mode, because they start from the premise that they don't get to know everyone's contacts. Virtually every other mainstream messaging system, including the ground-up E2E encrypted ones, keep a complete plaintext contact database serverside.
  - Tistron 5y ago
    Thanks. What is the problem with "people using a bunch of different devices, getting new phones, etc" in what I suggested? If I make a fresh install, then next time a friend messages me, it costs them a few seconds of delay in sending their first message because my client asks them to prove themself. I don't see the problem, but I imagine there are problems since smarter people than me are not doing it this way. I'd like to understand what I am missing here. I guess tweaking the difficulty to be actually difficult for a server farm, yet possible for an old device would be the main problem.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      I'm not saying it isn't potentially workable, just that it's deceptively hard to deploy across the whole Signal userbase. A company like Slack or Discourse could build something like this easily, because it'd be mostly managed from the servers, which they control, working from a single source of truth about who's talking to who. Signal doesn't have that luxury.
farmerstan 5y ago
I’m interested in applying to and working at Signal. But is there a chance I would get put on a list of some sort making my life more difficult by the government?
- kijiki 5y ago
  No one can give you a 100% answer, but I can relay some personal anecdotes which might help. I have consulted for the Signal Foundation in the past. None of the employees or consultants I worked with indicated that they'd had any problems. Around 2010 timeframe, I hosted the RedPhone server backend on some spare colo hardware I owned. RedPhone, along with TextSecure, were the predecessors to Signal Messenger. I have never had any (signal related) issues with the government.
Markoff 5y ago
First impressions? I left Signal years ago after using it for years, but I have one question - do they still actively hide that by long pressing Send button you can force send SMS instead Signal message or they show it to user at first launch somehow?

129 points by feross 5y ago

Still requiring SIM, no go if you care about privacy

Signal's message requests is a major selling point for me. I recently created a Signal account after having a bad experience in which someone used my phone number to harass me with SMS/calls (every time, from a different VOIP number). It's frustrating that, even in this era, there is no good way to filter out malicious actors from SMS/call. P.S. You can sign up with Signal via a VOIP number to avoid sharing your real phone number. See: https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/signal-tutorial-second-phone-number/ https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/signal-tutorial-second-p...

dheera 5y ago
Yes, I do this. I really wish they and everyone else would stop using phone number as an ID and use an alphanumeric ID. Really, I don't want to give out a phone number to everyone.
- johnisgood 5y ago
  Exactly. How hard can it be? It would make it way more secure for almost no effort. I would use Signal if it did not require a phone number or an e-mail address (whichever it requires).
  - dheera 5y ago
    I'm okay with it requiring an e-mail address, that's easier to be universally accessible, as long as your e-mail provider is sane and doesn't require SMS confirmation to login. Phone numbers, for most people, only work within a certain part of the world and aren't easily accessible worldwide.
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      The reason I am not okay with it is that it is usually tied to your person in one way or another. Have you tried getting an e-mail while using Tor? Next to impossible. Plus, it is unnecessary really. You can use nicknames or say, a generated UUID of some sort, with perhaps a QR code for easy copying.
      - zrth 5y ago
        crating a new yandex email account works nicely via tor for me
        johnisgood 5y ago
        I will check. I would say that it works... for now. :P It is not something we should rely on, I think.
alerighi 5y ago
It's complicated and can be expensive. Also people that has you real phone number cannot contact you on Signal, so you have to have two accounts, one with your real number to chat with your contacts and another one with the fake one to share with strangers that you don't trust, and as far as I know the Signal app doesn't support two account (yes on Android there are ways to have two instances of the app, on iOS you can't). To me Telegram is superior to Signal because it gives you both options, use your phone numbers with people that already have you in the contacts, and don't share your number with strangers in a group.
- stereoradonc 5y ago
  Completely agree. Telegram is far superior to any other platform out there. Balance of privacy and security, by default.
  - bryans 5y ago
    How can you say that when Telegram's end-to-end encryption is disabled by default, and you need to go out of your way to create a secret chat? Their default is the opposite of secure.
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      And again, there is no E2EE on desktop. Telegram looks nice, and it ends there.
  - johnisgood 5y ago
    Briar is far superior. Yes, there is support for desktop as well, but it is under heavy development. For phones: Briar For desktop: Ricochet Yes, I get it, Ricochet lacks a lot of goodies Telegram has, but having stickers != secure. For secure chatting only, Ricochet does the job. No one will even know that you are using it. :)
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      > No one will even know that you are using it. :) Apart from all the red flags you're raising by using tor though.. The problem with tor is that it's associated with a lot of malicious stuff. The same way that IRC was for a while. Using it on a VPS for example was forbidden at many providers. Though since the rise of Freenode (and its fall and re-emergence as Libera) it has re-established itself as a platform for serious communication. Though this kind of legitimate use is exactly what Tor needs to get out of the "dark" corner in many people's eyes, I do think it's there at the moment.
slownews45 5y ago
I've not had this problem with iMessage really. Are you SURE its not possible to block out bad actors on messaging?
- sneak 5y ago
  Apple keeps detailed metadata records of who sends messages to whom on iMessage, when, and how often. Signal does not. Apple backs up iMessage plaintext contents to Apple, via non-e2e iCloud Backup, bypassing iMessage's end to end encryption. Signal does not.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    My point is whatever approach apple is taking, I'm not getting a lot of spam on iMessage, and the one time I did it was pretty easy to mark as spam if I remember.
- asethos 5y ago
  iMesssage allows you to filter out bad actors -- but raw SMS (green text message) does not. I was getting a few SMS messages a day, each from a different phone number, likely with a service like TextNow.com

ISL 5y ago

Is it strictly-true that anti-spam algorithms must be hidden to be effective? It would seem that initially, spammers would have the upper hand, but in the long run, coordinated and open effort against spammers has the potential to pay off. Furthermore, to have a closed algorithm that cuts off the ability for people to communicate opens the door to institutionalized censorship -- designating a political opponent's communication as spam could limit their ability to be heard.

zimpenfish 5y ago
> Is it strictly-true that anti-spam algorithms must be hidden to be effective? Can't answer that but there were, for a long time, services that would run your "targeted emails" through spamassassin et al for you and give you advice on how to tweak them to lower the resultant score.
Arnt 5y ago
I've fought spam in other contexts and found that to be true. A change stopped spam until spammers learned what the change was, which made them adapt. The adaption might not be perfect, but it would happen, so prolonging the blocked period was essential. If one can do something that's effective and that the spammers don't understand for months, that's great. If they can spam for days and then blocked for a longer period and that repeats, they'll go away and attack an easier target instead (well, some of them will look back later). Let me try an argument other than "it's been my experience", though. Suppose that it's not true. In that case, the anti-spam filter provides a publicly visible definition of spam in its code, and it's one that isn't grounded in the recipients' opinions. If the filter is to be effective, spammers must not be able to adapt their behaviour in a way that users consider spam but isn't according to the definition. Many people have tried to provide such a definition since 1995 and AIUI all have failed. I think the persisten failure indicates that it's extremely unlikely that one can be found, and therefore it's extremely unlikely that a publicly visible spam filter can be as effective as one that can be updated in secret.
- correct_horse 5y ago
  Do you think an eventually open style spam filter could work? One where the implemntation is released say 2 years after it was first written (including modifications)

wpietri 5y ago

This is great! I haven't ever received Signal spam but have been getting say 5 junk SMS and 15 junk calls each week. They must be doing something right.

Canada 5y ago

Not looking forward to this... I use bots and I bet this will make them stop working at some inconvenient time. I wish I could put up collateral, say stablecoin in a smart contract, where Signal can ban my account and keep the money if I abuse, but otherwise do not break my automation.

awiuerqwoieru 5y ago
Why are you not using elements?
- Canada 5y ago
  Have definitely considered this. Running your own matrix server definitely solves the spam problem, and element has some cool looking plugin featues that go beyond simple chat bot... Just have been using Signal for many years already, find it very convenient on mobile, and already put quite a bit of effort into my bot for it.
kijiki 5y ago
Unless your bots are doing things that get their messages reported by recipients, this shouldn't affect you at all.
- Canada 5y ago
  Hope you're right. I only create groups and add my approximately 10 users to. The bot posts events in a group and also takes action based on commands users can say in group. I used to have an onboading process where my bot would message a user to ask if it's ok to be added to the group.. the purpose being for the user to reply so the bot can learn the safety number. Recent changes kinda broke that.

MaxGanzII 5y ago

Signal was superb for a long time, and then received a hefty chunk of funding, and, although I may be wrong, has declined since then, and in fact jumped the shark about a year ago. They attempted ever more forcefully to make users to set a PIN to protect server-side state; it started with a dialog at the bottom of the screen, obscuring about 20% of the user list, which could not be dimissed, and then after a few weeks progressed to the a full page dialog, which could not be dismissed - rendering the app unusable. All you saw upon starting was the full page dialog demanding you set a PIN to continue using Signal. I did not want any server-side state, and so did not set a PIN, and stopped using Signal. After a few weeks, the full-page dialog went away, and I found I could use Signal again. Signal actually blocked usage of the app to force users to adopt unwanted new functionality. It's hard to imagine any app doing well with such mis-management. I opened a thread discussing the problem on their support/public discussion forum, which was deleted. I also at first opened a bug report on Git, before I understood it was all intentional, this was also deleted. Since this experience, I've regarded Signal as on the way out, but it's still the best there is right now.

leevlad 5y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe your comment is misguided. The PIN is a security option that prevents a SIM-swapping attacker from registering a new device under your phone number unless they know the PIN. You can opt out of it (and it might be opt-in to begin with). You can also easily opt out of PIN reminders. Both of these options are in Settings -> Account. As for server state - my understanding is that Signal attempts to be zero-knowledge overall, but they definitely store some state on the server. I believe it's encrypted using your private key that's not backed up to the server. Setting the PIN does not change that. Server state comment aside, it seems your main complaint is about a pop-up PIN entry UI that can be opted out of? I get that it might seem annoying, but it feels like a fairly weak criticism of a messaging platform, certainly not one that should warrant an impression that Signal is "on the way out"?
- bilal4hmed 5y ago
  My complaint with them is the whole thing with mobilecoin. They hid that integration for a year, by not pushing server updates and when the news hit, they promised to do an AMA explaining it all. Its been months since that has happened and the AMA never happened. Moxies involvement is very muddy and never clarified, it was a pump n dump at best.https://amycastor.com/2021/04/07/signal-adopts-mobilecoin-a-crypto-project-linked-to-its-own-creator-moxie-marlinspike/ https://amycastor.com/2021/04/07/signal-adopts-mobilecoin-a-... That incident, they lost a lot of respect for me.

noja 5y ago

Great, but... Please let people allow Signal to automatically save their media to their photo roll (or whatever ios calls it). The number of people I have met who require this and left Signal _after starting to use it_ is astonishing.

dewey 5y ago
Do you think that's really the reason they are abandoning it? I think the bigger issue is probably that most of their friends are not on there and they use it less frequently until they abandon it.
- noja 5y ago
  They abandoned it for two reasons: the reason above (automatic saving of family photos doesn't exist), and notifications not showing up.
csydas 5y ago
This surprises me greatly, as it's my biggest annoyance with WhatsApp and Google Hangouts or whatever they call it now (I've not yet accepted the new app, so it still calls itself hangouts, but clearly is using the new chat app backend...) I despise that it shows up in my main photos whenever someone sends a photo/gif/vid on these apps. Telegram segregates its local storage to a separate folder that Android doesn't seem to grab for the photo-roll and I want it this way; my photoroll should only be __my__ pictures, not random stuff my friends send me. I talk to different people on different apps in very different ways; the ways I joke with my best friends is absolutely not appropriate for the ways I talk with the older people in my life, and vice versa. And it's absolutely not about me testing these waters; that's not for an App/OS to decide, that's for me to decide, and mixing these photos into one central location makes it more annoying and precarious for me to accidentally tap and share something I never meant to because the App/OS saved it to a central location that it never should have. I don't even agree with "give people the option"; photocell/gallery/whatever are for __my pictures__. Downloads are for just that; Downloads. Apps should stay away from the pre-defined user space and put it in correctly named locations. I realize I'm "reeeeee-ing" here, but it's honestly a huge pet peeve of mine to see all the photos from the chat apps I use to keep in touch with a small handful of people dump themselves into a user space that isn't theirs. Telegram does it right, and apparently Signal does too -- I cannot understand why other chat-apps feel the need to behave otherwise; finding said photos is a matter of a single system call, so it's not like discoverability is a challenge for them. The users __will learn__, it's not hard to summon the file manager even with locked down permissions.

Waterluvian 5y ago

Edit: I’m out of date for most of this. Way to go Signal team! See comments below my complainy post. Forcing me to recite my PIN every few weeks is one of the most irritating UX I’ve seen. I’m sure there’s some smart engineer explanation in terms of cryptography and being unable to recover it if lost. But just let me disable it if I’m okay losing my entire account if I forget it. Also last time I checked the binding of a phone number to Signal was really bad. I had a friend abandon Signal and I could never sms them ever again.

JasonFruit 5y ago
Your last paragraph provides an insight I hadn't had; that is a serious problem. I personally appreciate the PIN repetition, as it encouraged me to use a code I had not used before, since I knew If be reminded to practice it now and then.
gdrift 5y ago
To send an SMS to a signal contact, press and hold the send button then from the popup select `Insecure SMS`.
- Waterluvian 5y ago
  Cool! Is there a way to say “always use SMS because this signal contact isn’t on signal anymore”
  - Aulig 5y ago
    It looks to me like it's a per contact switch, so I think that's what you want, yea :)
  - girzel 5y ago
    When you stop using signal, you can log in to the signal website and say "I'm no longer using Signal"; that will solve the problem with your Signal-using contacts. I just checked and it looks life you have to deregister your account from within the Signal app (ie, can't uninstall first). I'm pretty sure it used to be more lenient: I remember friends being able to deregister their numbers after the fact.

modeless 5y ago

Just got a new phone and migrating Signal was a total disaster. The first thing I did was login to the new phone which is apparently the wrong thing to do because you lose all your old messages and there's no option to import after you login. You have to logout but there is no logout. Gotta uninstall and reinstall, or clear app data. Next I tried the account migration feature which requires using both phones simultaneously, hope you didn't erase your old phone yet. But it doesn't work anyway, it's just broken. So after failing at that several times, then I had to manually make a backup on the old phone, write down a 20 digit numeric code that's only displayed once on screen, transfer the backup file manually, type the code on the new phone, and then it logged me in but silently failed to import the backup. Had to uninstall again and did the exact same steps again and then it finally worked. What a travesty. Security shouldn't come with this kind of UX disaster.

LogonType10 5y ago
Sounds like you footgunned yourself. When starting Signal for the first time it gives the option to register OR migrate old account. There's no UI in the world that can totally protect users from themselves.
- gugagore 5y ago
  That's only one part of the struggle that was mentioned. Even when using the migration feature, the comment reported it not working, and needing to manually transfer the backup file.
rlpb 5y ago
I recently moved phones and had the opposite experience. The Signal migration went very smoothly. Moving WhatsApp did not. I ended up managing to do it but not before about five attempts, each of which made me reauth my phone number and I hit rate limiting, etc.
pocketlim 5y ago
Recently got a new phone and the transition was super smooth. Tried to open Signal on the new phone, it somehow knew that I needed to transfer my backup, asked me to scan a QR code and keep the phones close together, a minute or so later, and done. Signal logged me out on the older device when it was finished. I've learned this lesson before though. Always keep your old phone around while transitioning to a new device in case you need to pull anything off of it.

myself248 5y ago

These all seem like useful changes, but I've never received spam over Signal. I'm glad that solves a problem for someone. What I have received were creepy messages from long-lost acquaintances who had been suddenly reminded, by virtue of my having installed the Signal app, that I existed and that I was attending a security-focused event at the time. And last I heard, Signal was adamantly opposed to removing these notifications. That's a big problem, IMHO.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
They usually oppose that because it helps them build engagement. People discovering each other helps increase app usage. I don't really like it either but all the other big players do this and it does really help. If signal doesn't it'll be even harder to get decent marketshare. There's this weird situation where fighting something means adopting some of their tactics even if you don't agree with them, otherwise it's not viable to compete. I think Signal is still better than eg WhatsApp but they are pretty similar in some ways because less privacy-sensitive users expect certain features like auto discovery. And without them it'll always remain a fringe thing.

jakecopp 5y ago

> To keep Signal a free global communication service without spam, we must depart from our totally-open posture and develop one piece of the server in private: a system for detecting and disrupting spam campaigns. Interesting. Matrix solves this problem by not associating a username with a phone number or email address (unless you opt in to). Does anyone have views on if this will work into the future? I'm moved ~90 of my friends onto Matrix (along with plenty of group chats), and most of them quite like the Element [1] app (though there are rough edges on iOS I'm hearing). [1]: https://element.io/ https://element.io/

vlmutolo 5y ago
How does not requiring a phone number help fight spam?
- jtriangle 5y ago
  phone numbers are all well leaked and accounted for at this point, and it's trivial for spammers to build a list of 'hot' phone numbers to try to scam with.

Tistron 5y ago

Is there a reason, when they have control of the client software and the protocol, that they don't introduce computational cost to establishing contact? Like, if I send a message to a particular number, and their client receives a message from me for the first time, it responds with "prove that it's worth it for you to message me: find an `n` character string that together with `random string` hashes to 5 leading zeroes", or something like that. Somehow I imagine that doing a few seconds of computation per initiated first message is unproblematic, but doing it for thousands or millions of numbers starts to be a problem. Why is this not done?

tptacek 5y ago
If the server is mediating that proof-of-work system, then the server is building a list of contacts, and not doing that is the #2 goal for the whole Signal project. If the client is doing it, you need to come up with a system that is resilient to people using a bunch of different devices, getting new phones, etc. This is a theme about building Signal: they're doing everything on hard mode, because they start from the premise that they don't get to know everyone's contacts. Virtually every other mainstream messaging system, including the ground-up E2E encrypted ones, keep a complete plaintext contact database serverside.
- Tistron 5y ago
  Thanks. What is the problem with "people using a bunch of different devices, getting new phones, etc" in what I suggested? If I make a fresh install, then next time a friend messages me, it costs them a few seconds of delay in sending their first message because my client asks them to prove themself. I don't see the problem, but I imagine there are problems since smarter people than me are not doing it this way. I'd like to understand what I am missing here. I guess tweaking the difficulty to be actually difficult for a server farm, yet possible for an old device would be the main problem.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    I'm not saying it isn't potentially workable, just that it's deceptively hard to deploy across the whole Signal userbase. A company like Slack or Discourse could build something like this easily, because it'd be mostly managed from the servers, which they control, working from a single source of truth about who's talking to who. Signal doesn't have that luxury.

farmerstan 5y ago

I’m interested in applying to and working at Signal. But is there a chance I would get put on a list of some sort making my life more difficult by the government?

kijiki 5y ago
No one can give you a 100% answer, but I can relay some personal anecdotes which might help. I have consulted for the Signal Foundation in the past. None of the employees or consultants I worked with indicated that they'd had any problems. Around 2010 timeframe, I hosted the RedPhone server backend on some spare colo hardware I owned. RedPhone, along with TextSecure, were the predecessors to Signal Messenger. I have never had any (signal related) issues with the government.

Markoff 5y ago

First impressions? I left Signal years ago after using it for years, but I have one question - do they still actively hide that by long pressing Send button you can force send SMS instead Signal message or they show it to user at first launch somehow?