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> ... but then Signal wouldn't have your phone number either. What they need it for is ... dubious if you ask me. The reasons they need it aren't really that
by tivert 3y ago
> ... but then Signal wouldn't have your phone number either. What they need it for is ... dubious if you ask me.
The reasons they need it aren't really that dubious to me: they want to create a service that actual people will actually use, not just weird privacy geeks who never gave up on PGP. Using phone numbers allows for the kind of user discovery that most people expect in 2024, and requiring them inserts a barrier to mass account creation that can keep spam accounts down to a manageable level (especially given the whole point is they can't do content-based spam-filtering in the way that makes email managable).
Personally, my understanding is they've always been trying to develop the maximally private usable chat app, which requires some compromises from the theoretically maximally private chat app.
- nottorp 3y agoBut then it's not private. It's linked to your phone number.
- WithinReason 3y agoYou can now hide you phone number, according to the blog post. [...] Selecting “Nobody” means that if someone enters your phone number on Signal, they will not be able to message or call you, or even see that you’re on Signal. And anyone you’re chatting with on Signal will not see your phone number as part of your Profile Details page – this is true even if your number is saved in their phone’s contacts. Keep in mind that selecting “Nobody” can make it harder for people to find you on Signal.
- nottorp 3y agoI can only hide my phone number from other people, and even for that it should have been hidden by default from the start. Can't hide it from some thought police which may or may not need a court order.
- borski 3y agoBut it’s irrelevant, as the chats are end to end encrypted regardless. So sure, they’d know you had a Signal account, but not the contents thereof.
- nottorp 3y agoWell, to link with recent news, do you think talking with the late Alexey Navalni over Signal would protect you from russian police? They'd still be able to see that you talked to him. And then what's the point of the super duper encryption?
- ivlad 3y agoIn Signal, probably no. Signal has this sealed sender functionality hiding significant amount of metadata from passive observer and active examination post-communication: https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ What Russian police would be able to see, that in a given time period of certificate rotation at most X people communicated to Navalny.
- wolverine876 3y ago> They'd still be able to see that you talked to him. Signal has no access to metadata, including participants in a conversation. All they know is the date of account creation and the date of the last connection. However, if they got access to Navalni's phone, then they of course can see everything Navalni can.
- nottorp 3y ago> However, if they got access to Navalni's phone, then they of course can see everything Navalni can. Aha :) Do you people also want the relevant xkcd? The one about the wrench...
- Summershard 3y agoSignal does not know who you correspond with. The only information they keep is the account creation timestamp, and the date that the account last connected to the Signal service. You may have confused this information with WhatsApp which indeed keeps a lot of metadata on each user.
- wyre 3y agoLuckily there are other messaging services that are private if you’re going to be that pedantic about it.
- hexage1814 3y ago>and requiring them inserts a barrier to mass account creation that can keep spam accounts Well, an even better barrier to reduce spam would be Signal to require some official ID of people...
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y agoBut that's also a barrier to actual users, which would be counter-productive.
- Angostura 3y agoI mean, a phone number is an arbtrary sequence of digits. I'm very happy to use a chat app where I say to someone 'what's your username?'. I'm not giving a chat app free access to all my contacts - and that includes things like Whatsapp
- garbanz0 3y agoYeah, privacy is weird and cringe! Let's call 'em "privacy-bros" or maybe "encryption-bros" to signify that they are low status (I don't want to be like them, ew!)
- fastball 3y agoIf you need privacy without usability just exchange pubkeys with your friends?
- verticalscaler 3y agoI think the remark is more about these sort of rhetorical tactics which permeate every topic. It is a fair remark.
- tivert 3y ago> I think the remark is more about these sort of rhetorical tactics which permeate every topic. It is a fair remark. It's not a fair remark though, all it did was twist what I said into a inflammatory derailment. The point is there are a lot of (usually technical) people who are too focused one aspect, but are missing the bigger picture. If you follow them, you'll probably get a communication app that only those people can/will use, which has deal breakers for mass-market adoption. And once that happens, those people probably won't use it either, since they want to communicate outside their group.
- verticalscaler 3y agoBoth his and your comments come off as inflammatory derailment to me. That's how it reads, I'm not ascribing malintent. People didn't use to talk like this, I hope you reconsider. "not just weird privacy geeks who never gave up on PGP." is simply not conducive towards making your point. You can make your (otherwise solid) point and even win the argument on merit without this sort of thing.
- 3y ago
- makeitdouble 3y ago> Using phone numbers allows for the kind of user discovery that most people expect in 2024 Do people really expect to still exchange phone numbers ? Fundamentally I don't want people to call me nor SMS me (that's for spam only), most messaging services will allow contact exchange through a QR code inside the app, and if everything else fail an email address will be the most stable fallback.
- op00to 3y ago> Do people really expect to still exchange phone numbers Yes. This is the norm in the US.
- fastball 3y agoAnd everywhere else on earth.
- makeitdouble 3y agoNot really, for better or worse. In many countries SMS was either crazy expensive, unreliable, wall gardened to death (can't message people on other carriers...) and had no traction in the first place. Then phone calls are also crazy expensive: I'm looking at the phone plans right now and the main focus is the data amount. Phone call options are either to only allow for super short conversations for a flat fee (less than 5min per call, for a 25% increase in the monthly plan) or 30 min to an hour of phone call for double to triple the price of the plans. Moving to an alternative is just the normal course given these incentives, and that's what people did in droves (looking at Japan for instance)
- nottorp 3y ago> not just weird privacy geeks who never gave up on PGP Looks like you're thinking about key exchanges as opposed to phone number exchanges. Ever heard of user nicknames?