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There will always be a tension between security and usability. A common situation is when a phone stops working (for instance, it fell into a puddle) or is lost
by cesarb 4y ago
There will always be a tension between security and usability. A common situation is when a phone stops working (for instance, it fell into a puddle) or is lost or stolen. If it stops working, you can just pop the SIM and put it on a new phone (assuming the new phone accepts SIM cards of the same size, instead of requiring an even smaller one); if it's lost (or your SIM card is too big for the new phone), you can go to one of the phone company's stores, present your identity card, and get a new SIM card associated with the same phone number. Either way, you don't have access to the Signal account anymore, since it was on the broken/lost/stolen phone; the SMS verification (plus the optional password) is the only way to recover it.
- ufmace 4y agoI thought about that, and I'm not sure it actually changes anything. So you want to register a new device with your Signal account and you don't have the previous device, either because you're a malicious attacker or you lost or destroyed it. Covering the attacker case, presumably you already can't access the message history. I don't see how you could reasonably do anything different for the lost device case, but I guess it's not that big a deal to lose message history. But if the message history is already gone either way, why not make it a entirely new and separate account?