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> Signal indicated that arbitrary usernames is something they're working on. no offense but they've been saying this for years, the feature may eventually come
by mi_lk 4y ago
> Signal indicated that arbitrary usernames is something they're working on.
no offense but they've been saying this for years, the feature may eventually come but I'm not holding my breath
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bilal4hmed 4y agoIn the most recent beta they have enabled the backend infrastructure for usernames
- em-bee 4y agoi think SMS support was part of the reason they could not do it before, since usernames would break that feature. removing SMS makes this a non-issue. the phone number is now just an arbitrary ID string which can be replaced by any other
- thomastjeffery 4y agoThere's no reason they couldn't have done both. Signal never used SMS as a transport. It only provided a UI to have unencrypted SMS messages alongside Signal chats. As far as Signal messenges themselves go, phone numbers always were an arbitrary ID string. Having a username that isn't a phone number would have only more clearly segregated the SMS feature from Signal chat; and the desire for that segregation is one of the key excuses they came up with for dropping SMS support from the Signal app.
- cesarb 4y ago> Signal never used SMS as a transport. Signal is a merge of the TextSecure and RedPhone applications; back when it was still called TextSecure, it did use SMS as a transport for encrypted messages.
- thomastjeffery 4y agoOK, that's historically interesting, though it really doesn't change my point.
- em-bee 4y agoof course they could have, but it would have made for a more complex UI and add potential confusion to users. nothing that would be a serious problem that could not be overcome, but any of these things are tradeoffs. cost, complexity, etc. SMS wasn't removed to make way for arbitrary user IDs. that would have been surprising even though i prefer IDs over SMS support. but if SMS was on the way out already it made sense to wait with implementing arbitrary user ID support until then. and now they have one less excuse not to implement it
- steve_taylor 4y agoI hate having to come up with a username. A better (IMHO) solution would be GUIDs or similar, generated on-device.
- ignoramous 4y agosteve_taylor is a perfectly nice username ;)
- xxpor 4y agoBitwarden will now generate usernames for you, like it can generate passwords.
- RNAlfons 4y agoFYI: https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-technology-deep-dive-building-a-faster-oram-layer-for-enclaves/46610/16 https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-technology-d...