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I couldn't believe it when I first signed up for Signal and people who had my number were * sent notifications * that I had just signed up. This could've includ

I couldn't believe it when I first signed up for Signal and people who had my number were * sent notifications * that I had just signed up. This could've included people I had blocked on my phone.

myself248 3y ago
Same. One included an unstable individual who I was happy had forgotten me. Suddenly he messages me out of nowhere -- "Oh hey, you still exist! And you just installed Signal.... hmm, given what day it is, I'm guessing you're at such-and-such event?" Absolutely unacceptable.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  I think the Signal devs hadn't thought this through at all and just blindly copied what Telegram was already doing thinking it must be cool and trendy with the masses, without understanding their core user base at all. Same with prioritizing stories, stickers and crypto payments as core features of Signal when that's not what most of their users care for. Meanwhile there's still no official way to port your existing chat history on PC and iOS to your new device, or support for Android tablets. Obviously, stickers are more important.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Signal (and Signal's phone number model) predates Telegram. It was designed as an SMS and WhatsApp replacement; that is, it was originally designed to replace insecure phone-number-addressed systems. Obviously, the cryptographic guarantees of the two systems aren't even close to comparable.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      May be. But that feature wasn't there since 2014. Signal has adopted a lot of "social media" feature from WhatsApp and Telegram over the years.
      - tptacek 3y ago
        They're messengers. They have messenger features. The details of how those features are implemented is what matter. Last I checked, Telegram doesn't even have encrypted group messaging, and it has a serverside database of who's talking to who. I don't know what "feature" you're talking about not existing until 2014, but before Open Whisper Systems, the thing we call Signal was "TextSecure", a literal SMS replacement.
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >They're messengers. They have messenger features. And some are better at being messengers than others.
        tptacek 3y ago
        This is true. At every point where Telegram and Signal had the choice between being a pleasant messenger experience or being secure and private, each made decisions consistent with all their previous decisions.
        tjoff 3y ago
        For some definition of secure and private. Forcing you to use your phone number and then the same second you created your account go behind your back and spam everyone you just did so is neither private nor something many would associate with secure. I guess something doesn't have to be secure if you can pretend it is public. Of course Signal has carefully designed their goals to allow them to do that but in doing so that is a straight up asshole move in a context where they should be seeking trust? Absolutely mind bending. This is a great improvement, but they have already proven they can't be trusted with anyone's phone number so it is a damn shame they still won't allow you to create an account without one. It is a decent service otherwise, but my fricking god I hope they at some point realize the harm they've done. Up until today I've been ashamed of suggesting signal. Hopefully that will change with this feature.
        3y ago
    - slim 3y ago
      TextSecure and Redphone did not upload your contacts to the cloud. No need to be a security expert to know that it's unwise to leak user state to contacts. In fact textsecure (now Silence) is the first SMS app to have a different colors for each contact to help the user avoid mistakingly messaging the wrong person.
  - ipqk 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - metalliqaz 3y ago
    Stickers are more important because just like every other tech company, growth is the only way to stay in business. You can just run a business on delivering a good product to your customers anymore. You have to grow constantly, which means bringing in new customers which, by definition, aren't part of the core user base. It's gross and depressing and it enshitifies everything
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >You can just run a business on delivering a good product to your customers anymore. Who said Signal was a good product to begin with? And who though adding sticker would improve market share? Casual users value UX and porting their chat history and VoIP calling vastly more than they value E-2-E encryption. You can't talk about growth when you fail to deliver on these fronts first. That's how Telegram and WhatsApps rule the market. Adding stickers won't move the userbase needle when you already lost your potential users at the lack of chat history and UX.
      - baq 3y ago
        > And who though adding sticker would improve market share? My daughter loves stickers.
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        That's not the point. The point is if stickers make people love Signal. Sticker are popular on other platforms as well but because those platforms are popular not because they have stickers.
      - WolfeReader 3y ago
        What fantasy land are you posting from? Signal has 40 million users as of 2022 (this was the first stat I found on a quick DDG search, which is all the effort your post deserves). Also: "Who said Signal was a good product to begin with?" LOL. Just read the comments on this link bro.
  - elevation 3y ago
    Nothing about Signal is haphazardly borrowed from Telegram. The feature we're discussing was chosen to help Signal to grow from a few thousand users to 50M+ without needing to build a social graph on Signal servers. This mechanism may not be ideal for all users, and it's possible that Signal has now outgrown it, but without it, there would be no Signal as we know it today.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >The feature we're discussing was chosen to help Signal to grow from a few thousand users to 50M+ without needing to build a social graph on Signal servers. How did THAT feature help Signal grow? You only receive that spammy message if you already have Signal installed and your contact already has it too. Signal grew a lot in 2021 (in Europe) because of the pandemonium created by Meta when they announced a change in WhatsApp Privacy Policy so everyone rushed to install Signal but the initial surge, was short lived. Moving the clocks forward to today, looking at my extended network of family, friends and acquaintances, almost everyone has Signal installed, but most don't use it anymore as it's too frustrating and feels dead, so everything is still on WhatsApp, especially groups. All the Signal groups I have, originally meant to replace the WhatsApp groups, slowly died out and people stopped posting on them or following them, defaulting instead back to the WhatsApp groups. You don't fix this lack of retention with stickers and spammy messenges.
      - shafyy 3y ago
        Let's see if and how Signal will become interoperable with WhatsApp later this year...
        baq 3y ago
        Tell me more?
- dylan604 3y ago
  I was all excited about Signal, but rarely use it because of this very feature. Once it started sending me notices about other users, I was extremely not happy. I was very hesitant since one of the first things it did was ask for access to contacts. I'm still pissed at myself for allowing it.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
One of the many reasons to never sign up for a service that requires your phone number, or have a special number just for this purpose.
smt88 3y ago
I've seen this on Telegram but never on Signal. I use Signal on both iOS and Windows.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 2024throwaway 3y ago
  I uninstalled Signal and haven't looked back due to the constant `X from your address book has joined Signal` notifications that you can't disable.
  - miken123 3y ago
    Except that, you can actually disable them. https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007061452-Does-Signal-send-my-number-to-my-contacts https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007061452-Do...
    - 2024throwaway 3y ago
      Well that's new then. You used to not be able to.
  - pitaj 3y ago
    There's a setting for it on Android at least: Settings > Notifications > Notify When > Contact joins Signal
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  I think you can turn that off with telegram, but I'm not sure if it's still the case.
dsp_person 3y ago
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/7409 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/7409 > We've discussed at length why this is not possible, but if you have more thoughts then please visit the forums. Please try not to open duplicate issues in the future, even if you feel like something is important. I wonder why this is "not possible"
- px43 3y ago
  The list of phone numbers with signal accounts is basically public. It kind of has to be. When a new number gets added and it matches someone in your address book, your app will tell you that one of your contacts has joined. People have always had the ability to turn off that feature, but that's not what the feature request seems to be asking. People seem to be asking for a way they can join Signal without their number showing up in the registry of Signal users. This is why it's "not possible". edit: This may have changed today. I'm now seeing an option that lets me hide my number from the registry. This means that even someone with my phone number will not be able to message me on Signal, which seems like a good deal to me.
photonthug 3y ago
After I realized this happened to me, I uninstalled signal. But because of the way signal jumps in and replaces normal sms, I found out later that signal users were no longer sending/receiving plain text messages to/from me properly. I forget the details but it was really frustrating.. first it ate my contact list and contacted them, then after I uninstalled it held those contacts hostage, breaking comms with them because those users didn’t know they were still signaling me, not using a normal text message. I text, they reply with signal, I can’t ask them to uninstall their app, so now if I don’t reinstall the app myself or borrow a friends phone to try and reconfigure it then I guess we’re now out of touch forever? It’s not privacy-friendly to replace or hide built in functionality, it’s just an attempt to coerce people and to bolster your user numbers.
- sigmar 3y ago
  >now if I don’t reinstall the app myself or borrow a friends phone to try and reconfigure it then I guess we’re now out of touch forever? It’s not privacy-friendly to replace or hide built in functionality, it’s just an attempt to coerce people and to bolster your user numbers. yeah, you need to authenticate to delete the account (aka deregister). How else would they verify that you are the owner of the account you want to delete?
  - photonthug 3y ago
    So because they elected to blur the line between their own opt in service and a built in service, I have to jump through extra hoops to properly opt out and get my comms back up? That’s if you even realize any of this is happening. Whether it’s down to design or to negligence, that’s a pretty hostile user experience and it feels deliberate, especially since they pawed through my Contacts to “help” me into this position. I felt disrespected and no longer very confident in their stated values/mission. Hard to use or recommend after something like that
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
  Signal has not supported SMS for quite a while now.
lynndotpy 3y ago
This and the iPad "We'll remind you later" iPad notification nag are significant problems. I am a big supporter of Signal, but it's certainly hostile to those escaping an abusive situation. Usernames are a step in the right direction at least.
avsteele 3y ago
Yes, this drove at least two people I know/encouraged to use it off the platform. When people see this they also think that Signal snooped their contacts. Very bad.
greysonp 3y ago
Hi there, engineer on the Signal Android app here. Just an FYI that the notifications are generated on the receiving client by detecting that one of their contacts newly showed up as a registered user -- they're not "sent out" by you when you register or anything. Also, these notifications have defaulted to being disabled for the last 1.5 years or so. So only people who go into their settings to manually turn them on should be seeing them at this point. That said, the complaint around this is usually that people don't want others to know that they use Signal. And unfortunately there was no way to _really_ do that (until now), because if you open your chat list, you'll see all of your registered contacts. But in the 7.0 release, we added the ability to hide yourself from being discoverable by phone number at all. So for people who don't want anyone else to know that their phone number is registered with Signal, they now have that option.
- dylan604 3y ago
  > But in the 7.0 release, we added great, but what about all of those people that installed before 7.0 and had it already happen to them? "oops" doesn't help. at. all.
- GuB-42 3y ago
  How come it wasn't the default right from the start? How can a privacy oriented company not see the privacy implication of this? Sometimes, you want to be forgotten by some people, and Signal is telling them you are still there and active on that number. I remember reading a story about someone getting into real trouble for that. Without "usernames", the proper way to handle it would have been to not let anyone know you are on signal when they look up your number. To get into contact, send a message, then the recipient will receive a notification with the message and an option to rely. If the recipient doesn't respond, from the sender point of view, it should be as if the account didn't exist.
- kelnos 3y ago
  I personally don't have a problem with this feature, and it's actually how I discovered Signal use among many of my friends. But I think it's inexcusable that these sorts of notifications could essentially allow someone to circumvent blocking done by one of their contacts. If I've blocked someone via my phone's default contact blocking mechanism, and then I join Signal, and that person is already on Signal, they should not suddenly be able to contact me... and even be explicitly invited to do so on their end! I wouldn't be surprised, though, if neither Android nor iOS gives regular apps access to the blocked contacts list. So I'm not really sure how an app like Signal could solve this problem.

I couldn't believe it when I first signed up for Signal and people who had my number were * sent notifications * that I had just signed up. This could've included people I had blocked on my phone.

myself248 3y ago

Same. One included an unstable individual who I was happy had forgotten me. Suddenly he messages me out of nowhere -- "Oh hey, you still exist! And you just installed Signal.... hmm, given what day it is, I'm guessing you're at such-and-such event?" Absolutely unacceptable.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
I think the Signal devs hadn't thought this through at all and just blindly copied what Telegram was already doing thinking it must be cool and trendy with the masses, without understanding their core user base at all. Same with prioritizing stories, stickers and crypto payments as core features of Signal when that's not what most of their users care for. Meanwhile there's still no official way to port your existing chat history on PC and iOS to your new device, or support for Android tablets. Obviously, stickers are more important.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Signal (and Signal's phone number model) predates Telegram. It was designed as an SMS and WhatsApp replacement; that is, it was originally designed to replace insecure phone-number-addressed systems. Obviously, the cryptographic guarantees of the two systems aren't even close to comparable.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    May be. But that feature wasn't there since 2014. Signal has adopted a lot of "social media" feature from WhatsApp and Telegram over the years.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      They're messengers. They have messenger features. The details of how those features are implemented is what matter. Last I checked, Telegram doesn't even have encrypted group messaging, and it has a serverside database of who's talking to who. I don't know what "feature" you're talking about not existing until 2014, but before Open Whisper Systems, the thing we call Signal was "TextSecure", a literal SMS replacement.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >They're messengers. They have messenger features. And some are better at being messengers than others.
        tptacek 3y ago
        This is true. At every point where Telegram and Signal had the choice between being a pleasant messenger experience or being secure and private, each made decisions consistent with all their previous decisions.
        tjoff 3y ago
        For some definition of secure and private. Forcing you to use your phone number and then the same second you created your account go behind your back and spam everyone you just did so is neither private nor something many would associate with secure. I guess something doesn't have to be secure if you can pretend it is public. Of course Signal has carefully designed their goals to allow them to do that but in doing so that is a straight up asshole move in a context where they should be seeking trust? Absolutely mind bending. This is a great improvement, but they have already proven they can't be trusted with anyone's phone number so it is a damn shame they still won't allow you to create an account without one. It is a decent service otherwise, but my fricking god I hope they at some point realize the harm they've done. Up until today I've been ashamed of suggesting signal. Hopefully that will change with this feature.
        3y ago
  - slim 3y ago
    TextSecure and Redphone did not upload your contacts to the cloud. No need to be a security expert to know that it's unwise to leak user state to contacts. In fact textsecure (now Silence) is the first SMS app to have a different colors for each contact to help the user avoid mistakingly messaging the wrong person.
- ipqk 3y ago
  [flagged]
- metalliqaz 3y ago
  Stickers are more important because just like every other tech company, growth is the only way to stay in business. You can just run a business on delivering a good product to your customers anymore. You have to grow constantly, which means bringing in new customers which, by definition, aren't part of the core user base. It's gross and depressing and it enshitifies everything
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >You can just run a business on delivering a good product to your customers anymore. Who said Signal was a good product to begin with? And who though adding sticker would improve market share? Casual users value UX and porting their chat history and VoIP calling vastly more than they value E-2-E encryption. You can't talk about growth when you fail to deliver on these fronts first. That's how Telegram and WhatsApps rule the market. Adding stickers won't move the userbase needle when you already lost your potential users at the lack of chat history and UX.
    - baq 3y ago
      > And who though adding sticker would improve market share? My daughter loves stickers.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        That's not the point. The point is if stickers make people love Signal. Sticker are popular on other platforms as well but because those platforms are popular not because they have stickers.
    - WolfeReader 3y ago
      What fantasy land are you posting from? Signal has 40 million users as of 2022 (this was the first stat I found on a quick DDG search, which is all the effort your post deserves). Also: "Who said Signal was a good product to begin with?" LOL. Just read the comments on this link bro.
- elevation 3y ago
  Nothing about Signal is haphazardly borrowed from Telegram. The feature we're discussing was chosen to help Signal to grow from a few thousand users to 50M+ without needing to build a social graph on Signal servers. This mechanism may not be ideal for all users, and it's possible that Signal has now outgrown it, but without it, there would be no Signal as we know it today.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >The feature we're discussing was chosen to help Signal to grow from a few thousand users to 50M+ without needing to build a social graph on Signal servers. How did THAT feature help Signal grow? You only receive that spammy message if you already have Signal installed and your contact already has it too. Signal grew a lot in 2021 (in Europe) because of the pandemonium created by Meta when they announced a change in WhatsApp Privacy Policy so everyone rushed to install Signal but the initial surge, was short lived. Moving the clocks forward to today, looking at my extended network of family, friends and acquaintances, almost everyone has Signal installed, but most don't use it anymore as it's too frustrating and feels dead, so everything is still on WhatsApp, especially groups. All the Signal groups I have, originally meant to replace the WhatsApp groups, slowly died out and people stopped posting on them or following them, defaulting instead back to the WhatsApp groups. You don't fix this lack of retention with stickers and spammy messenges.
    - shafyy 3y ago
      Let's see if and how Signal will become interoperable with WhatsApp later this year...
      - baq 3y ago
        Tell me more?
dylan604 3y ago
I was all excited about Signal, but rarely use it because of this very feature. Once it started sending me notices about other users, I was extremely not happy. I was very hesitant since one of the first things it did was ask for access to contacts. I'm still pissed at myself for allowing it.

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

One of the many reasons to never sign up for a service that requires your phone number, or have a special number just for this purpose.

smt88 3y ago

I've seen this on Telegram but never on Signal. I use Signal on both iOS and Windows.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
2024throwaway 3y ago
I uninstalled Signal and haven't looked back due to the constant `X from your address book has joined Signal` notifications that you can't disable.
- miken123 3y ago
  Except that, you can actually disable them. https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007061452-Does-Signal-send-my-number-to-my-contacts https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007061452-Do...
  - 2024throwaway 3y ago
    Well that's new then. You used to not be able to.
- pitaj 3y ago
  There's a setting for it on Android at least: Settings > Notifications > Notify When > Contact joins Signal
mardifoufs 3y ago
I think you can turn that off with telegram, but I'm not sure if it's still the case.

dsp_person 3y ago

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/7409 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/7409 > We've discussed at length why this is not possible, but if you have more thoughts then please visit the forums. Please try not to open duplicate issues in the future, even if you feel like something is important. I wonder why this is "not possible"

px43 3y ago
The list of phone numbers with signal accounts is basically public. It kind of has to be. When a new number gets added and it matches someone in your address book, your app will tell you that one of your contacts has joined. People have always had the ability to turn off that feature, but that's not what the feature request seems to be asking. People seem to be asking for a way they can join Signal without their number showing up in the registry of Signal users. This is why it's "not possible". edit: This may have changed today. I'm now seeing an option that lets me hide my number from the registry. This means that even someone with my phone number will not be able to message me on Signal, which seems like a good deal to me.

photonthug 3y ago

After I realized this happened to me, I uninstalled signal. But because of the way signal jumps in and replaces normal sms, I found out later that signal users were no longer sending/receiving plain text messages to/from me properly. I forget the details but it was really frustrating.. first it ate my contact list and contacted them, then after I uninstalled it held those contacts hostage, breaking comms with them because those users didn’t know they were still signaling me, not using a normal text message. I text, they reply with signal, I can’t ask them to uninstall their app, so now if I don’t reinstall the app myself or borrow a friends phone to try and reconfigure it then I guess we’re now out of touch forever? It’s not privacy-friendly to replace or hide built in functionality, it’s just an attempt to coerce people and to bolster your user numbers.

sigmar 3y ago
>now if I don’t reinstall the app myself or borrow a friends phone to try and reconfigure it then I guess we’re now out of touch forever? It’s not privacy-friendly to replace or hide built in functionality, it’s just an attempt to coerce people and to bolster your user numbers. yeah, you need to authenticate to delete the account (aka deregister). How else would they verify that you are the owner of the account you want to delete?
- photonthug 3y ago
  So because they elected to blur the line between their own opt in service and a built in service, I have to jump through extra hoops to properly opt out and get my comms back up? That’s if you even realize any of this is happening. Whether it’s down to design or to negligence, that’s a pretty hostile user experience and it feels deliberate, especially since they pawed through my Contacts to “help” me into this position. I felt disrespected and no longer very confident in their stated values/mission. Hard to use or recommend after something like that
ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
Signal has not supported SMS for quite a while now.

lynndotpy 3y ago

This and the iPad "We'll remind you later" iPad notification nag are significant problems. I am a big supporter of Signal, but it's certainly hostile to those escaping an abusive situation. Usernames are a step in the right direction at least.

avsteele 3y ago

Yes, this drove at least two people I know/encouraged to use it off the platform. When people see this they also think that Signal snooped their contacts. Very bad.

greysonp 3y ago

Hi there, engineer on the Signal Android app here. Just an FYI that the notifications are generated on the receiving client by detecting that one of their contacts newly showed up as a registered user -- they're not "sent out" by you when you register or anything. Also, these notifications have defaulted to being disabled for the last 1.5 years or so. So only people who go into their settings to manually turn them on should be seeing them at this point. That said, the complaint around this is usually that people don't want others to know that they use Signal. And unfortunately there was no way to _really_ do that (until now), because if you open your chat list, you'll see all of your registered contacts. But in the 7.0 release, we added the ability to hide yourself from being discoverable by phone number at all. So for people who don't want anyone else to know that their phone number is registered with Signal, they now have that option.

dylan604 3y ago
> But in the 7.0 release, we added great, but what about all of those people that installed before 7.0 and had it already happen to them? "oops" doesn't help. at. all.
GuB-42 3y ago
How come it wasn't the default right from the start? How can a privacy oriented company not see the privacy implication of this? Sometimes, you want to be forgotten by some people, and Signal is telling them you are still there and active on that number. I remember reading a story about someone getting into real trouble for that. Without "usernames", the proper way to handle it would have been to not let anyone know you are on signal when they look up your number. To get into contact, send a message, then the recipient will receive a notification with the message and an option to rely. If the recipient doesn't respond, from the sender point of view, it should be as if the account didn't exist.
kelnos 3y ago
I personally don't have a problem with this feature, and it's actually how I discovered Signal use among many of my friends. But I think it's inexcusable that these sorts of notifications could essentially allow someone to circumvent blocking done by one of their contacts. If I've blocked someone via my phone's default contact blocking mechanism, and then I join Signal, and that person is already on Signal, they should not suddenly be able to contact me... and even be explicitly invited to do so on their end! I wouldn't be surprised, though, if neither Android nor iOS gives regular apps access to the blocked contacts list. So I'm not really sure how an app like Signal could solve this problem.