7 ms·

Personally I'd rather avoid the feature bloat. I also think it just waters-down the "secure" image they are clearly going for. I mean, broadcasting images to yo

Personally I'd rather avoid the feature bloat. I also think it just waters-down the "secure" image they are clearly going for. I mean, broadcasting images to your contact list isn't exactly what I think of when I think "private messaging".

dunefox 4y ago
Then don't use it. There, it's private again.
tptacek 4y ago
Everything about Signal will make more sense if you forget every opinion you've had or read on a message board, and accept that the project's mission is simply to transition as many people off insecure systems as they can. For example: message board nerds are apoplectic about Signal's phone number requirement, but the systems ordinary people were already overwhelmingly used phone numbers already. As communications trend towards ephemeral video messages (I have trouble understanding why, too, but then I'm old), that's where they're going to head. The cool stuff about Signal is what happens under the hood. They don't want a special identity as a "private messenger"; they believe all messaging should be secure.
- izacus 4y ago
  If that's true, why do they refuse to implement backups so normal people don't lose data when their phone breaks or the app bugs out?
  - kasey_junk 4y ago
    Because they haven’t figured out how to do that securely?
    - codethief 4y ago
      What I don't understand here (though admittedly I haven't been following the iOS discussions closely) is why backups are possible on Android but not on iOS?
      - TimTheTinker 4y ago
        As I understand it, iOS backups normally go to iCloud -- where they're stored encrypted but the keys are held by Apple (i.e. not end-to-end encrypted, and not a zero-knowledge system by any stretch). This makes iCloud-stored iOS backups susceptible to subpoena, malicious employees, and/or good-enough hackers.
        hackmiester 4y ago
        So, I have stopped this, because I do not use iCloud. Can I enable backups?
        izacus 4y ago
        Nothing stops Signal from E2E encrypting backups on their side.
      - izacus 4y ago
        The backups on Android are near useless as well - they expect users to remember and save a massively long string of numbers (that are pre-generated, so they can't even choose a password they remember) and then they only do backup manually and onto device storage where it'll be gone together with everything else on the device if it breaks or dies. Getting that backup off the device is yet another manual process for most users they need to think about. Compare this to Telegram: user doesn't have to do anything. Compare this to iMessage: user doesn't have to do anything. Compare this to WhatsApp: user just needs to click agree. The last two even save backups in an E2E encrypted fashion unreadable by servers.
        codethief 4y ago
        That was not my question. In any case, I actually prefer it the way Signal does because 1) I don't have to sign up for / rely on a cloud provider, 2) if need be, I can decrypt the backup on my own and export it to some other format. > then they only do backup manually Wrong. The backup can be done automatically (i.e. every day).
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      Then do it insecurely and warn the user. 'We can't figure out how to do this securely' is their BS excuse for every bad design decision or unimplemented feature. You might say 'but they don't want to make people less secure, people will get the wrong idea!' But they do this already, in ways that are much worse than allowing the user to make a security decision for themselves. You can change a setting to prevent screenshots inside the Signal phone app, so you can't take screenshots. Your conversations are now secure, right? Nobody can take pictures of your disappearing messages! WRONG. You can turn on that feature and I can still take screenshots all day, including disappearing messages that you send to me. Likewise, Signal can't tell if you're downloading pictures or copying text I send to you. You could be backing up everything - my only 'assurance' is that you probably aren't doing it because it's inconvenient. You can change disappearing messages timer to anything you want! Great! But the change of timer is itself a message. So if we are arrested and police get into one person's Signal, they can see when disappearing messages were turned on and when the timer was lengthened or shortened. Sure, the messages disappeared, but what were you doing on August 23rd at 7:39pm that made you change the timer to 10 minute4s for 3 hours? We know where you were because of your phone's IMEI, I guess we will tell the court that you were trying to cover something up during those 3 hours and charge you with obstruction of justice. I have asked them to change the latter behavior repeatedly, explaining why it could be a problem for users, and all I ever hear is 'good point, we'll look into it' even though there's no reason that information should be stored.
      - kasey_junk 4y ago
        Your former examples are things that quite simply can’t be mitigated in any case. If you want to send a message to someone there is no way to prevent them from storing it in a way you control. Your latter example is also a security concern they can’t address. A jurisdiction that allows a message about a settings change being used as a basis for obstruction of justice can rule the use of signal as the same (though I do agree that former is problematic on its face). I dont know the ins and outs of the problems with backups, but it doesn’t take a phd in cryptography to envision a case where your settings about backups open all your contacts to automated dragnet surveillance. In that case it doesn’t make sense for a single user to downgrade everyone else’s security settings.
    - izacus 4y ago
      They figured out how to do secure stories and crypto payments but not how to store an encrypted file like all other messengers? C'mon, don't bs us :)
  - int_19h 4y ago
    I don't know about other platforms, but Signal on Android supports backing up to a file, as well as direct transfer of data to another phone.
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      It supports backing up to a file that you can't specify. This is unhelpful in many use cases. Example: I am running out of space on my phone. I look, and see Signal is taking 4gb of space. But I would like to preserve a lot of that media. So I buy a mini-SD card and install it in my phone. Yay! Now to turn on Signal chat backups! Oh, but the backups are hardcoded to a location on your primary storage that you can't change. so even though I have 126gb of free space on the SD card I installed, I can't back Signal up to it and I am still running out of space. My only option is to try removing every other app I have installed, and hope there is enough space reclaimed to perform a backup, which I can then copy off my system so I can reinstall my apps...WTF. Meanwhile there is no way to back up a single chat. You can archive it, but that just removes it from your Signal home screen, it doesn't actually create an archive of any kind. And there is no way to back anything up on desktop. This isn't a feature, it's an antipattern.
      - klabb3 4y ago
        Even a cynic like me wouldn't go so far as to assume bad intent here. Signal is open source so the file format should be readable and likely this is just an oversight, I guess it's not a highly requested feature. Have you filed an issue?
        anigbrowl 4y ago
        I never said anything about intent. If it's an oversight then maybe they should be thinking a little harder and listening to feedback from beta testers, of which I am one. Backing up to the same device on which are running out of space is an extremely obvious problem, to which the solution is to just ask the user where they want the backup stored instead of deciding for them.
        izacus 4y ago
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  > The cool stuff about Signal is what happens under the hood. Nobody was asking for stickers, stories, or crypto. Those things aren't cool.
  - hackmiester 4y ago
    I'm sorry, but that's just not true. Stickers are widely used in the group chats I am in. I myself have created multiple sticker packs since the sticker feature launched. Before that, several people mentioned they thought Signal looked like a shitty app because it "didn't even have stickers." Ultimately there was no shortage of boring, cryptographically-secure apps. Signal is filling demand for an app that is both secure and fun to use.
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      Taking it up after it became available is not the same thing as asking for it. Sorry but this a frivolous cosmetic thing compared to security issues like Signal's ongoing linkage to phone numbers.
      - hackmiester 4y ago
        That is correct, but "nobody was asking for stickers" isn't, and that sort of thing does dramatically affect adoption. Also, in the cases I am talking about, not using an app because it doesn't have a feature technically does mean they didn't request the feature, but I'm not sure that is a useful distinction if our goal is to get people to use more secure methods of communication.
        anigbrowl 4y ago
        I really can't buy the proposition that demand for stickers outweighed the years-long pain points about things like your Signal identity being tied to your phone number or a ping going out to everyone in a person's address book who already used signal, both of which are at odds with the core mission of secure and private communications.
      - 4y ago
autoexec 4y ago
> broadcasting images to your contact list isn't exactly what I think of when I think "private messaging". Neither was signal taking your contact list and uploading a copy along with your name and photo and storing that data forever in the cloud. Neither was refusing to update their privacy policy to reflect their new data collection practices. A company that promotes itself to whistleblowers and human rights activists and then lies to them about what data they collect and keep is highly unethical. None of this inspires confidence in Signal as a private/secure messaging service. I've moved away from it. I wish them luck as a social media platform.
- bentley 4y ago
  > Neither was signal taking your contact list and uploading a copy along with your name and photo and storing that data forever in the cloud. It seems incomplete to not mention that that data is end‐to‐end encrypted, and that name and photo are optional.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    In which case it would also be incomplete not to mention that that same data is stored insecurely and protected by an easy to brute force PIN. ( see https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096 https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-secu...)
    - bentley 4y ago
      Yes, “though contacts are encrypted, users are not prevented from using a weak PIN” would have been a better way to word this criticism from the start, rather than implying that they are stored completely unencrypted.
      - autoexec 4y ago
        “though contacts are encrypted, users are not prevented from using a weak PIN” ignores that Signal encouraged users to set a weak pin (for many people the word "PIN" means a 4 digit number) and that the data is stored using SGX which has already proved to be vulnerable. In my view the fact that they have been lying in their privacy policy is a much bigger problem for a company we're supposed to trust.
GycDH6mb 4y ago
They actually allow you to turn off stories in settings, and that entire tab will just disappear. You have to respect that!
- falcolas 4y ago
  My curmudgeonly self would prefer if the stories were off by default. It's not a feature I'm even remotely interested in, and feature creep really isn't a positive thing. I've tried snapchat and Instagram stories, and I hate that the messages disappear with time. It seems counter-intuitive for an asynchronous communication method, and that doesn't even count how it always feels like another FOMO marketing gag to keep you engaged with the app. Just let people delete posts (and really delete them to boot).
  - batiudrami 4y ago
    I think you don’t quite have the right mindset for the purpose of stories. The point is “this is not important enough to interrupt my friends; but here’s what I’m up to if you’re interested”. It doesn’t matter that it expires, because it’s only relevant to what is happening now. Of course it still has all the usual social media failings where it is used to make the senders life seem more exciting and fun than it really is but I see the point of having the option. I especially like signal’s groups implementation. I have a couple of large group chats where I am happy to share my day with people but it’s not important enough to notify everyone’s phone and it doesn’t matter if they miss it.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      > it’s only relevant to what is happening now See - that's the part I don't get. Photos, to me, are not ephemeral. They are valuable, even if you don't think they are at the time. I've lost too many photos because I considered them to be ephemeral, and I regret that loss because I now only have vague memories of the events they captured. My only remaining memories of some of my oldest friends who are no longer with me are captured in those "irrelevant" photos. Future you will thank you for keeping photos of your friends.

dunefox 4y ago

Then don't use it. There, it's private again.

tptacek 4y ago

Everything about Signal will make more sense if you forget every opinion you've had or read on a message board, and accept that the project's mission is simply to transition as many people off insecure systems as they can. For example: message board nerds are apoplectic about Signal's phone number requirement, but the systems ordinary people were already overwhelmingly used phone numbers already. As communications trend towards ephemeral video messages (I have trouble understanding why, too, but then I'm old), that's where they're going to head. The cool stuff about Signal is what happens under the hood. They don't want a special identity as a "private messenger"; they believe all messaging should be secure.

izacus 4y ago
If that's true, why do they refuse to implement backups so normal people don't lose data when their phone breaks or the app bugs out?
- kasey_junk 4y ago
  Because they haven’t figured out how to do that securely?
  - codethief 4y ago
    What I don't understand here (though admittedly I haven't been following the iOS discussions closely) is why backups are possible on Android but not on iOS?
    - TimTheTinker 4y ago
      As I understand it, iOS backups normally go to iCloud -- where they're stored encrypted but the keys are held by Apple (i.e. not end-to-end encrypted, and not a zero-knowledge system by any stretch). This makes iCloud-stored iOS backups susceptible to subpoena, malicious employees, and/or good-enough hackers.
      - hackmiester 4y ago
        So, I have stopped this, because I do not use iCloud. Can I enable backups?
      - izacus 4y ago
        Nothing stops Signal from E2E encrypting backups on their side.
    - izacus 4y ago
      The backups on Android are near useless as well - they expect users to remember and save a massively long string of numbers (that are pre-generated, so they can't even choose a password they remember) and then they only do backup manually and onto device storage where it'll be gone together with everything else on the device if it breaks or dies. Getting that backup off the device is yet another manual process for most users they need to think about. Compare this to Telegram: user doesn't have to do anything. Compare this to iMessage: user doesn't have to do anything. Compare this to WhatsApp: user just needs to click agree. The last two even save backups in an E2E encrypted fashion unreadable by servers.
      - codethief 4y ago
        That was not my question. In any case, I actually prefer it the way Signal does because 1) I don't have to sign up for / rely on a cloud provider, 2) if need be, I can decrypt the backup on my own and export it to some other format. > then they only do backup manually Wrong. The backup can be done automatically (i.e. every day).
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Then do it insecurely and warn the user. 'We can't figure out how to do this securely' is their BS excuse for every bad design decision or unimplemented feature. You might say 'but they don't want to make people less secure, people will get the wrong idea!' But they do this already, in ways that are much worse than allowing the user to make a security decision for themselves. You can change a setting to prevent screenshots inside the Signal phone app, so you can't take screenshots. Your conversations are now secure, right? Nobody can take pictures of your disappearing messages! WRONG. You can turn on that feature and I can still take screenshots all day, including disappearing messages that you send to me. Likewise, Signal can't tell if you're downloading pictures or copying text I send to you. You could be backing up everything - my only 'assurance' is that you probably aren't doing it because it's inconvenient. You can change disappearing messages timer to anything you want! Great! But the change of timer is itself a message. So if we are arrested and police get into one person's Signal, they can see when disappearing messages were turned on and when the timer was lengthened or shortened. Sure, the messages disappeared, but what were you doing on August 23rd at 7:39pm that made you change the timer to 10 minute4s for 3 hours? We know where you were because of your phone's IMEI, I guess we will tell the court that you were trying to cover something up during those 3 hours and charge you with obstruction of justice. I have asked them to change the latter behavior repeatedly, explaining why it could be a problem for users, and all I ever hear is 'good point, we'll look into it' even though there's no reason that information should be stored.
    - kasey_junk 4y ago
      Your former examples are things that quite simply can’t be mitigated in any case. If you want to send a message to someone there is no way to prevent them from storing it in a way you control. Your latter example is also a security concern they can’t address. A jurisdiction that allows a message about a settings change being used as a basis for obstruction of justice can rule the use of signal as the same (though I do agree that former is problematic on its face). I dont know the ins and outs of the problems with backups, but it doesn’t take a phd in cryptography to envision a case where your settings about backups open all your contacts to automated dragnet surveillance. In that case it doesn’t make sense for a single user to downgrade everyone else’s security settings.
  - izacus 4y ago
    They figured out how to do secure stories and crypto payments but not how to store an encrypted file like all other messengers? C'mon, don't bs us :)
- int_19h 4y ago
  I don't know about other platforms, but Signal on Android supports backing up to a file, as well as direct transfer of data to another phone.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    It supports backing up to a file that you can't specify. This is unhelpful in many use cases. Example: I am running out of space on my phone. I look, and see Signal is taking 4gb of space. But I would like to preserve a lot of that media. So I buy a mini-SD card and install it in my phone. Yay! Now to turn on Signal chat backups! Oh, but the backups are hardcoded to a location on your primary storage that you can't change. so even though I have 126gb of free space on the SD card I installed, I can't back Signal up to it and I am still running out of space. My only option is to try removing every other app I have installed, and hope there is enough space reclaimed to perform a backup, which I can then copy off my system so I can reinstall my apps...WTF. Meanwhile there is no way to back up a single chat. You can archive it, but that just removes it from your Signal home screen, it doesn't actually create an archive of any kind. And there is no way to back anything up on desktop. This isn't a feature, it's an antipattern.
    - klabb3 4y ago
      Even a cynic like me wouldn't go so far as to assume bad intent here. Signal is open source so the file format should be readable and likely this is just an oversight, I guess it's not a highly requested feature. Have you filed an issue?
      - anigbrowl 4y ago
        I never said anything about intent. If it's an oversight then maybe they should be thinking a little harder and listening to feedback from beta testers, of which I am one. Backing up to the same device on which are running out of space is an extremely obvious problem, to which the solution is to just ask the user where they want the backup stored instead of deciding for them.
      - izacus 4y ago
anigbrowl 4y ago
> The cool stuff about Signal is what happens under the hood. Nobody was asking for stickers, stories, or crypto. Those things aren't cool.
- hackmiester 4y ago
  I'm sorry, but that's just not true. Stickers are widely used in the group chats I am in. I myself have created multiple sticker packs since the sticker feature launched. Before that, several people mentioned they thought Signal looked like a shitty app because it "didn't even have stickers." Ultimately there was no shortage of boring, cryptographically-secure apps. Signal is filling demand for an app that is both secure and fun to use.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Taking it up after it became available is not the same thing as asking for it. Sorry but this a frivolous cosmetic thing compared to security issues like Signal's ongoing linkage to phone numbers.
    - hackmiester 4y ago
      That is correct, but "nobody was asking for stickers" isn't, and that sort of thing does dramatically affect adoption. Also, in the cases I am talking about, not using an app because it doesn't have a feature technically does mean they didn't request the feature, but I'm not sure that is a useful distinction if our goal is to get people to use more secure methods of communication.
      - anigbrowl 4y ago
        I really can't buy the proposition that demand for stickers outweighed the years-long pain points about things like your Signal identity being tied to your phone number or a ping going out to everyone in a person's address book who already used signal, both of which are at odds with the core mission of secure and private communications.
    - 4y ago

autoexec 4y ago

> broadcasting images to your contact list isn't exactly what I think of when I think "private messaging". Neither was signal taking your contact list and uploading a copy along with your name and photo and storing that data forever in the cloud. Neither was refusing to update their privacy policy to reflect their new data collection practices. A company that promotes itself to whistleblowers and human rights activists and then lies to them about what data they collect and keep is highly unethical. None of this inspires confidence in Signal as a private/secure messaging service. I've moved away from it. I wish them luck as a social media platform.

bentley 4y ago
> Neither was signal taking your contact list and uploading a copy along with your name and photo and storing that data forever in the cloud. It seems incomplete to not mention that that data is end‐to‐end encrypted, and that name and photo are optional.
- autoexec 4y ago
  In which case it would also be incomplete not to mention that that same data is stored insecurely and protected by an easy to brute force PIN. ( see https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096 https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-secu...)
  - bentley 4y ago
    Yes, “though contacts are encrypted, users are not prevented from using a weak PIN” would have been a better way to word this criticism from the start, rather than implying that they are stored completely unencrypted.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      “though contacts are encrypted, users are not prevented from using a weak PIN” ignores that Signal encouraged users to set a weak pin (for many people the word "PIN" means a 4 digit number) and that the data is stored using SGX which has already proved to be vulnerable. In my view the fact that they have been lying in their privacy policy is a much bigger problem for a company we're supposed to trust.

GycDH6mb 4y ago

They actually allow you to turn off stories in settings, and that entire tab will just disappear. You have to respect that!

falcolas 4y ago
My curmudgeonly self would prefer if the stories were off by default. It's not a feature I'm even remotely interested in, and feature creep really isn't a positive thing. I've tried snapchat and Instagram stories, and I hate that the messages disappear with time. It seems counter-intuitive for an asynchronous communication method, and that doesn't even count how it always feels like another FOMO marketing gag to keep you engaged with the app. Just let people delete posts (and really delete them to boot).
- batiudrami 4y ago
  I think you don’t quite have the right mindset for the purpose of stories. The point is “this is not important enough to interrupt my friends; but here’s what I’m up to if you’re interested”. It doesn’t matter that it expires, because it’s only relevant to what is happening now. Of course it still has all the usual social media failings where it is used to make the senders life seem more exciting and fun than it really is but I see the point of having the option. I especially like signal’s groups implementation. I have a couple of large group chats where I am happy to share my day with people but it’s not important enough to notify everyone’s phone and it doesn’t matter if they miss it.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    > it’s only relevant to what is happening now See - that's the part I don't get. Photos, to me, are not ephemeral. They are valuable, even if you don't think they are at the time. I've lost too many photos because I considered them to be ephemeral, and I regret that loss because I now only have vague memories of the events they captured. My only remaining memories of some of my oldest friends who are no longer with me are captured in those "irrelevant" photos. Future you will thank you for keeping photos of your friends.