4 ms·
> The most important reason for us to remove SMS support from Android is that plaintext SMS messages are inherently insecure. This is an incredibly bad reason
by throw10920 4y ago
> The most important reason for us to remove SMS support from Android is that plaintext SMS messages are inherently insecure.
This is an incredibly bad reason to remove SMS support. Sure, the fact "plaintext SMS messages are inherently insecure" is true, but the implication is not "remove SMS support".
Most people are motivated strongly by convenience. Signal is convenient because of its use as a drop-in replacement for your existing SMS client, so people use it, which increases their personal privacy and security. Removing SMS support will directly and substantially reduce Signal usage, and therefore both of those things.
The solution to "SMS is insecure" is pretty obviously "make a warning message telling users that", which also solves their second problem:
> This brings us to our second reason: we’ve heard repeatedly from people who’ve been hit with high messaging fees after assuming that the SMS messages they were sending were Signal messages, only to find out that they were using SMS, and being charged by their telecom provider.
...and the third problem:
> Third, there are serious UX and design implications to inviting SMS messages to live beside Signal messages in the Signal interface.
This is ridiculous. You're not making a paid product where if your app doesn't look perfect people won't use it - you're making a messaging app, and slightly ugly workarounds are perfectly OK.
> It’s important that people don’t mistake SMS messages sent or received via the Signal interface as secure and private when in fact they are not.
THEN DESIGN THE APP THAT WAY. IT'S NOT THAT HARD.
This post is a travesty, and the reasoning contained inside is completely insane.
Wikipedia says that Moxie is still on the Signal Board of Directors, but I find it hard to believe that he would let something this crazy go through.
- codethief 4y ago> Wikipedia says that Moxie is still on the Signal Board of Directors, but I find it hard to believe that he would let something this crazy go through. IIRC I read (some years ago) that Moxie wasn't really convinced that SMS support should stay in Signal-Android, either.
- velosol 4y agoHe was definitely against the encryption-over-SMS feature of TextSecure as Android and smartphones more broadly grew in marketshare. He also wrote the blog post on how it doesn't matter if you have multiple messaging apps (or federation between them) because the notification area of your phone is the modern federation engine. I may be paraphrasing a bit heavily but the post is at [1]. I agree I can see him being at least OK with removing SMS but it seems at odds with what I felt was his overall view of "get the most people the most security we can" and by extension increasing the number of people using secure messaging services to normalize it so simply using encryption isn't seen as an outlier. The latter part is closer to moot now more than ever before with WhatsApp being E2E by default and Apple having huge marketshare in some markets with iMessage. [1]: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
- posguy 4y agoThe ecosystem has kept moving, and Signal has not been keeping pace. Whether Signal can catch up to its open and closed source competition remains an open question, and I don't think features like Signal Stories are going to be what helps them start nipping at the heels of the other much larger competition.
- codethief 4y ago> I agree I can see him being at least OK with removing SMS but it seems at odds with what I felt was his overall view of "get the most people the most security we can" You're right: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/6134#issuecomment-276569041 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/6134#issu...
- justinpombrio 4y agoThey already tried putting a small light grey "unlocked" icon on messages. If that doesn't scream "SMS", nothing does. All available options exhausted. Time to throw in the towel.