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Your comments sound pretty damning and got me curious if there was some conspiracy I didn't yet know about, but then I click to the source and it turns out that

Your comments sound pretty damning and got me curious if there was some conspiracy I didn't yet know about, but then I click to the source and it turns out that this is not a silent change to upload more data without users knowing anything, it's an announced feature to (afaik optionally) backup this data to Signal's servers, protected with a PIN. It may not be obvious to my mother, sure, but it's also not exactly rocket science that 4 digits will not be secure under any offline-attackable circumstances. (For that they add SGX which seems broken so that is moot.) On the other hand, it's not exactly hard to find out who's talking to whom if the server owners want to (or are forced to). Traffic analysis without onion routing is trivial at least in theory, so tptacek isn't quite correct either that Signal does not allow any sort of social graph obtaining. Sealed sender helps a little, but is not a solid thing to rely on if you're the kind of target for whom they would even bother submitting a subpoena. Wire also doesn't keep a list of who's in a group with whom (your client handles that) so there, too, you have to do traffic analysis to find these relations -- just an easier form than you would have to do if Wire would have had sealed sender. Hence I consider it all about equal, with a small asterisk for Signal that they try really hard to make it as good as possible (compared to Wire doing just the now-regular end-to-end encryption).

autoexec 5y ago
It was an "announced" change but in a very confusing manner that caused a lot of problems and misunderstandings. My view on this failure in clear communication is summed up well by this guy (the entire post/comment section is worth a look though, it illustrates the confusion very well): https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/fyjy7a5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin... The folks at community.signalusers.org caught on before it was even implemented, but most people had no idea why signal was suddenly asking them for a pin and no idea what data was being collected when they gave it one, and no idea the data collection would still happen if they opted out. Just look at this recent thread and how very very wrong so many people still are (confidently even): https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/q5tlg1/what_info_does_signal_store_about_its_user/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/q5tlg1/what_info_do... The terrible communication, followed by the fact that their privacy policy was never updated (The very first sentence of which is an outright lie) are huge red flags. The nature of Signal makes it a valuable target. While I can't rule out simple incompetence, if signal has been handed a national security letter with a gag order and the state is on site collecting user's data Room 641A style, this kind of behavior could be explained as them telling their users not to trust them as loudly as they could. Wire would seem more trustworthy in that sense. Ultimately though, the fact remains that the best way to keep your user's data safe is to never collect it in the first place. Signal could have given people an option to opt out of the data collection like many in the community had been asking them to and none of this would have been an issue. Since there are other apps that don't collect and store your name, photo, and lists of everyone you've been talking to I'd rather just stick to recommending those. I'll admit to still feeling a bit bitter about Signal though because I was a fan and the alternatives I've found aren't nearly as nice to use.

autoexec 5y ago

It was an "announced" change but in a very confusing manner that caused a lot of problems and misunderstandings. My view on this failure in clear communication is summed up well by this guy (the entire post/comment section is worth a look though, it illustrates the confusion very well): https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/fyjy7a5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin... The folks at community.signalusers.org caught on before it was even implemented, but most people had no idea why signal was suddenly asking them for a pin and no idea what data was being collected when they gave it one, and no idea the data collection would still happen if they opted out. Just look at this recent thread and how very very wrong so many people still are (confidently even): https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/q5tlg1/what_info_does_signal_store_about_its_user/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/q5tlg1/what_info_do... The terrible communication, followed by the fact that their privacy policy was never updated (The very first sentence of which is an outright lie) are huge red flags. The nature of Signal makes it a valuable target. While I can't rule out simple incompetence, if signal has been handed a national security letter with a gag order and the state is on site collecting user's data Room 641A style, this kind of behavior could be explained as them telling their users not to trust them as loudly as they could. Wire would seem more trustworthy in that sense. Ultimately though, the fact remains that the best way to keep your user's data safe is to never collect it in the first place. Signal could have given people an option to opt out of the data collection like many in the community had been asking them to and none of this would have been an issue. Since there are other apps that don't collect and store your name, photo, and lists of everyone you've been talking to I'd rather just stick to recommending those. I'll admit to still feeling a bit bitter about Signal though because I was a fan and the alternatives I've found aren't nearly as nice to use.