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They also refuse to update their privacy policy, which lies when they say that signal is designed to "never collect and store any sensitive information". They'r

They also refuse to update their privacy policy, which lies when they say that signal is designed to "never collect and store any sensitive information". They're collecting and forever storing a list of all your contacts in the cloud, along with your name, phone number, and photo. Considering too their very sketchy communication about that data collection and the confusion it's caused, I suspect that lie to be a canary warning people away from Signal. If it isn't, and they're just misleading people about the risks of using their service while also advertising it to vulnerable people like activists and whistleblowers, I guess they failed to live up to my "high standard" of having ethics. In either case, all I can do is recommend that people stay the hell away from Signal. If you want a Mozilla of secure messaging, try Jitsi or Jami

lxgr 3y ago
> They're collecting and forever storing a list of all your contacts in the cloud, along with your name, phone number, and photo. The photo is part of your profile, which is only available to bidirectional contacts, as far as I know? And getting visibility into everybody's phonebooks is really hard to avoid in a service like Signal. Yes, theoretically they don't have to automatically scan your entire phone book for Signal membership and could do that just in time when you are about to message somebody (and I believe you can actually use it like that if you just don't grant it phone book access). But many users do actually like being able to see which of their contacts are reachable on Signal, rather than going by trial-and-error essentially forever, just in case one of their existing contacts did finally sign up in the end. Adoption also matters to keep a project alive. As far as storing your contact list online goes, you can always opt out of that by not creating a PIN, or alternatively use a high-entropy one, which takes SGX out of the equation entirely if you don't trust it. And for actual contact sync, Signal has been doing extensive non-SGX research on the topic (and used a bloom filter based solution for Redphone in the past!), and it's apparently just a really hard problem to solve trustlessly in a scalable way [1]. > I suspect that lie to be a canary warning people away from Signal [...] they're just misleading people about the risks of using their service while also advertising it to vulnerable people like activists and whistleblowers, I guess they failed to live up to my "high standard" of having ethics [...] This is exactly what I mean. From what I can see, Signal sometimes takes non-conservative bets, but ultimately acts in good faith. That's a style not everybody has to agree with, but calling the entire effort harmful is just ridiculous to me. I'm all in favor of having these discussions, but to some extent, I'm also concerned that when they bleed over into mainstream tech news (usually in a very lossy way thanks to shoddy reporting), it will confuse people even more or drive them towards less secure alternatives such as Telegram. > If you want a Mozilla of secure messaging, try Jitsi or Jami These are nice projects, but no. We're talking about a Mozilla-equivalent to Facebook (WhatsApp, Messenger) here, not Zoom (which Jitsi actually does quite nicely)! [1] https://signal.org/blog/contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/contact-discovery/
- autoexec 3y ago
  > As far as storing your contact list online goes, you can always opt out of that by not creating a PIN, or alternatively use a high-entropy one, which takes SGX out of the equation entirely if you don't trust it. Do you have a source for that? That has not been the case previously. Please see this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin... Unless they've changed something recently, if you don't set a pin, one is created for you and all of your data is still uploaded and stored in the cloud. If you do set one, no matter what it's set to, your data is uploaded and forever stored in the cloud. The confusion surrounding this issue seems intentional (note https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/fyjy7a5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin...) What's harmful is misleading vulnerable users about the risks they take by using Signal. Signal has a responsibility to make it very clear to everyone using their product what data is being uploaded to their servers and stored, and when that takes place. Signal promotes their app to people whose freedom, and lives may be at stake, so it's critical that those people are allowed to evaluate what using Signal could mean for them. They can't do that while Signal outright lies to them and provides misleading answers to direct questions. > These are nice projects, but no. We're talking about a Mozilla-equivalent to Facebook (WhatsApp, Messenger) here, not Zoom (which Jitsi actually does quite nicely)! What does facebook messenger do those those apps don't? They support voice and video calls, but also instant messaging, file sharing, screen sharing, group chat, etc
paradox460 3y ago
Or matrix and element, which are, y'know, actually open source
- lxgr 3y ago
  Which parts of Signal are not open source?

lxgr 3y ago

> They're collecting and forever storing a list of all your contacts in the cloud, along with your name, phone number, and photo. The photo is part of your profile, which is only available to bidirectional contacts, as far as I know? And getting visibility into everybody's phonebooks is really hard to avoid in a service like Signal. Yes, theoretically they don't have to automatically scan your entire phone book for Signal membership and could do that just in time when you are about to message somebody (and I believe you can actually use it like that if you just don't grant it phone book access). But many users do actually like being able to see which of their contacts are reachable on Signal, rather than going by trial-and-error essentially forever, just in case one of their existing contacts did finally sign up in the end. Adoption also matters to keep a project alive. As far as storing your contact list online goes, you can always opt out of that by not creating a PIN, or alternatively use a high-entropy one, which takes SGX out of the equation entirely if you don't trust it. And for actual contact sync, Signal has been doing extensive non-SGX research on the topic (and used a bloom filter based solution for Redphone in the past!), and it's apparently just a really hard problem to solve trustlessly in a scalable way [1]. > I suspect that lie to be a canary warning people away from Signal [...] they're just misleading people about the risks of using their service while also advertising it to vulnerable people like activists and whistleblowers, I guess they failed to live up to my "high standard" of having ethics [...] This is exactly what I mean. From what I can see, Signal sometimes takes non-conservative bets, but ultimately acts in good faith. That's a style not everybody has to agree with, but calling the entire effort harmful is just ridiculous to me. I'm all in favor of having these discussions, but to some extent, I'm also concerned that when they bleed over into mainstream tech news (usually in a very lossy way thanks to shoddy reporting), it will confuse people even more or drive them towards less secure alternatives such as Telegram. > If you want a Mozilla of secure messaging, try Jitsi or Jami These are nice projects, but no. We're talking about a Mozilla-equivalent to Facebook (WhatsApp, Messenger) here, not Zoom (which Jitsi actually does quite nicely)! [1] https://signal.org/blog/contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/contact-discovery/

autoexec 3y ago
> As far as storing your contact list online goes, you can always opt out of that by not creating a PIN, or alternatively use a high-entropy one, which takes SGX out of the equation entirely if you don't trust it. Do you have a source for that? That has not been the case previously. Please see this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin... Unless they've changed something recently, if you don't set a pin, one is created for you and all of your data is still uploaded and stored in the cloud. If you do set one, no matter what it's set to, your data is uploaded and forever stored in the cloud. The confusion surrounding this issue seems intentional (note https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/fyjy7a5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin...) What's harmful is misleading vulnerable users about the risks they take by using Signal. Signal has a responsibility to make it very clear to everyone using their product what data is being uploaded to their servers and stored, and when that takes place. Signal promotes their app to people whose freedom, and lives may be at stake, so it's critical that those people are allowed to evaluate what using Signal could mean for them. They can't do that while Signal outright lies to them and provides misleading answers to direct questions. > These are nice projects, but no. We're talking about a Mozilla-equivalent to Facebook (WhatsApp, Messenger) here, not Zoom (which Jitsi actually does quite nicely)! What does facebook messenger do those those apps don't? They support voice and video calls, but also instant messaging, file sharing, screen sharing, group chat, etc

paradox460 3y ago

Or matrix and element, which are, y'know, actually open source

lxgr 3y ago
Which parts of Signal are not open source?