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Does anyone know why Signal has decided to not let people sign up without a phone number? That would avoid any such vector relating to SMS, albeit at the expen

by tppol 4y ago

Does anyone know why Signal has decided to not let people sign up without a phone number? That would avoid any such vector relating to SMS, albeit at the expense of making it more difficult to recover an account from a new device.

palata 4y ago
The problem is the social graph. You need to know the ID of all your contacts at some point, right? Either that's stored on the server (e.g. your Facebook friends), but then the server has access to it, or it's stored locally in your app, but if you lose your phone then you lose your graph. Signal has been working on a way to store your graph securely on their servers, but it's hard, and not there yet. The great point about your contact list is that it is decentralised, and it exists already (so you don't have to exchange an ID with all your friends manually).
- Snitch-Thursday 4y ago
  It feels like everyone keeps repeating the same dialog tree that 'but thou must store their contacts list' and I don't see why. Solution? Store your contacts list on your device. Back it up with your offline chat backups (android does external chat backups now, IOS should be enabled plus give em icloud backups to boot). with a new signal app on a new phone, you restore your chat backups and poof your contacts list gets loaded back. your new signal instance reconnects with the other clients and poof, Signal's excuse for using phone numbers and storing your contacts list on their servers is demolished. It seems so simple to me, but I feel like I'm failing to understand something about why this is so hard.
  - palata 4y ago
    Because you forget that you need to build your contact list (if you don't use the phone numbers), which for 99% of users (including me) is a major pain. Then your backup idea works, but kind of sucks in terms of UX (at least in Signal's point of view), and therefore they decided to go with phone number first, and work on going towards usernames later. Don't worry, you haven't invented anything. It's just that your idea is not at the level of UX provided by WhatsApp/Signal, and the solution is more complex than you think.
ysnp 4y ago
They have mentioned a few times that it is to reduce spam. See: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/2383#issuecomment-758085898 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/2383#issu... and in this paywalled article https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/signal-meredith-whittaker-whatsapp-messenger-datenschutz-1.5652005 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/signal-meredith-whitt... where they roughly say >We are currently working with high priority on the fact that you can assign usernames and hide your mobile number. However, it will still be necessary in order to register. There are several reasons for this, including the fight against spam.

by tppol 4y ago

palata 4y ago

The problem is the social graph. You need to know the ID of all your contacts at some point, right? Either that's stored on the server (e.g. your Facebook friends), but then the server has access to it, or it's stored locally in your app, but if you lose your phone then you lose your graph. Signal has been working on a way to store your graph securely on their servers, but it's hard, and not there yet. The great point about your contact list is that it is decentralised, and it exists already (so you don't have to exchange an ID with all your friends manually).

Snitch-Thursday 4y ago
It feels like everyone keeps repeating the same dialog tree that 'but thou must store their contacts list' and I don't see why. Solution? Store your contacts list on your device. Back it up with your offline chat backups (android does external chat backups now, IOS should be enabled plus give em icloud backups to boot). with a new signal app on a new phone, you restore your chat backups and poof your contacts list gets loaded back. your new signal instance reconnects with the other clients and poof, Signal's excuse for using phone numbers and storing your contacts list on their servers is demolished. It seems so simple to me, but I feel like I'm failing to understand something about why this is so hard.
- palata 4y ago
  Because you forget that you need to build your contact list (if you don't use the phone numbers), which for 99% of users (including me) is a major pain. Then your backup idea works, but kind of sucks in terms of UX (at least in Signal's point of view), and therefore they decided to go with phone number first, and work on going towards usernames later. Don't worry, you haven't invented anything. It's just that your idea is not at the level of UX provided by WhatsApp/Signal, and the solution is more complex than you think.

ysnp 4y ago

They have mentioned a few times that it is to reduce spam. See: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/2383#issuecomment-758085898 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/2383#issu... and in this paywalled article https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/signal-meredith-whittaker-whatsapp-messenger-datenschutz-1.5652005 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/signal-meredith-whitt... where they roughly say >We are currently working with high priority on the fact that you can assign usernames and hide your mobile number. However, it will still be necessary in order to register. There are several reasons for this, including the fight against spam.