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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 num
by 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 agoYes, 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 agoExactly. 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 agoI'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 agoThe 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 agocrating a new yandex email account works nicely via tor for me
- johnisgood 5y agoI will check. I would say that it works... for now. :P It is not something we should rely on, I think.
- alerighi 5y agoIt'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 agoCompletely agree. Telegram is far superior to any other platform out there. Balance of privacy and security, by default.
- bryans 5y agoHow 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 agoAnd again, there is no E2EE on desktop. Telegram looks nice, and it ends there.
- johnisgood 5y agoBriar 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 agoI've not had this problem with iMessage really. Are you SURE its not possible to block out bad actors on messaging?
- sneak 5y agoApple 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 agoMy 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 agoiMesssage 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