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> Signal Login, one-time payment, price unknown Of course price is unknown, because it doesn’t matter, what matters is linking your real identity to signal. As

by tamimio 2mo ago

> Signal Login, one-time payment, price unknown Of course price is unknown, because it doesn’t matter, what matters is linking your real identity to signal. As I mentioned before, many times, that the main purpose of the phone requirement isn’t to fight “spam”, is to fight privacy and always have the option to expose the real person behind that account whenever needed. Most countries around the world require an ID to be issued a new phone number, rest will require payment of any sort to activate it, not to mention the ability to accurately track someone’s location only knowing their phone number, which is why it’s still used almost anywhere online as an ID, sometimes as “2FA” too, is to find you with little recourses whenever needed, and Canada now are having a unified single “login portal” for anything government wise, and as you guessed, the 2FA is only a phone number! So Signal will try to fool some privacy conscious people with the “no phone number required anymore, we are private, woohoo!!” While linking your whole payment and KYC to that account. Hard pass.

lrvick 2mo ago
This is why as a security engineer and researcher even I do not have a Signal account. My conversation with Moxie about Signal convinced me that Signal cannot be trusted as they are obsessed with centralized control and user tracking, via app store stats. Privacy assurances come from enclaves internet randos can freely manipulate as they chose not to implement full source bootstrapped remote attestation. Also relying on app stores that can, with a court order, ship anyone an extra special fork of signal with compromised encryption, and they will never know. But F-Droid with independent control and reproducible builds? Unacceptable to Signal. Their stance is use proprietary partner platforms with their centralized servers so you can be tracked and backdoored at any time or GTFO. Centralized comms that force you to identify yourself and use proprietary software are an enemy of a free society. I do not understand the true goals of Signal, but their actions are inconsistent with their stated ones. This is not even getting started on their Mobilecoin premine scam that was a blatant conflict of interest and a wildly blatant violation of their non-profit charter given Moxies financial ties to Mobilecoin.
- fwn 2mo ago
  > [Signal is] obsessed with [...] user tracking, via app store stats. Not sure about that. You do not need Google Play Store to download or update Signal. I use Obtainium to update directly via signal.org for a very long time now. JSON: https://updates.signal.org/android/latest.json https://updates.signal.org/android/latest.json
  - lrvick 2mo ago
    You can sideload (for now) but that forces you to enable "unknown sources" and increase the attack surface on your device, forcing you to reproduce every new release from source by hand to verify it was not compromised... or blindly sideload binaries and just hope your IP address was not served an extra special one. Moxie -knew- this was a path almost no one has time to use safely and liked it that way. He actively blocked attempts by the community to put Signal in f-droid, so in cases where it is the system package manager, automated signed reproducible builds can be updated painlesssly. By his own admission, moxie blocked convenient and secure community package managers because he wants most installs to happen from Google Play or the App Store so he gets analytics. In the end Molly made it to f-droid anyway and Signal has no way to stop it, but they actively discourage the use of any binaries they did not compile and cannot track and modify at any time.
    - fwn 2mo ago
      Reproducible builds are nice, and I would love to have them for Signal. But I think I disagree with most of what you've written. Enabling "unknown sources" does not make my device less secure. The setting is also disingenuously named: It is in fact "known sources" I am installing (not "sideloading") software from. It is just not a source Google wants to know of. I also do not need to reproduce every new release from source. It is a signed APK I'm getting from signal.org. If the antagonists in my threat model are so capable they could serve a tailored, signed APK from signal.org for the IP I'm using, I should absolutely not use a messenger whose identifier is my phone number, aka my real world identity AND permanent location marker. That feels absurd. A threat actor that capable could just locate me, pick me up and shake me until I unlock the device. You are saying Molly exists and works fine, so I'm not really sure the whole problematization of Signal holds up. Does the existence of Molly not disprove your criticism that users would have to use the mainline Signal app from the Play Store? I think it might be a good sign that criticism of Signal tends to presuppose absurdly capable threat actors. It suggests there is little low-hanging fruit left to criticize.
Cider9986 2mo ago
> is to fight privacy and always have the option to expose the real person behind that account whenever needed This post is FUD. Signal is about privacy. Nowhere do they mention anonymity as a goal of their messenger. They don't sacrifice contact privacy by using sealed sender (trustless) and by not keeping metadata (trust required that the server isn't malicious but proven in legal documents). It barely would help an investigation to know the identity of a Signal account. All they disclose is the account creation time [1] when handed a court order. [1] https://signal.org/bigbrother/district-of-columbia/ https://signal.org/bigbrother/district-of-columbia/
- autoexec 2mo ago
  That's outdated info. Currently signal collects your name, photo, phone number, and your contacts and permanently stores them in the cloud, weakly protected See: https://web.archive.org/web/20250117232443/https://www.vice.com/en/article/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250117232443/https://www.vice.... https://web.archive.org/web/20230519120156/https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096/2 https://web.archive.org/web/20230519120156/https://community...
  - Cider9986 2mo ago
    It's an optional feature. Mathew Green has continued to use and recommend it. If you have the threat model to worry about Intel SGX being cracked, you will also know to use a long passphrase. You could also use a GrapheneOS phone with a weak pin, it makes it easier to access the data. You can use a long passphrase if you want to protect your data. It doesn't make GrapheneOS bad. Other apps can see that data themselves. It's not outdated, it's from March 2026.
    - autoexec 2mo ago
      It isn't an optional feature. If you decide not to create a pin one is created for you and your data is still uploaded to the cloud. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20230616082821/https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230616082821/https://old.reddi... https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ says "By design, it does not store a record of your contacts, social graph, conversation list, location, user avatar, user profile name, group memberships, group titles, or group avatars." However, today the reality is that signal collects your name, photo/avatar, and your contacts and stores it forever in the cloud.

by tamimio 2mo ago

lrvick 2mo ago

This is why as a security engineer and researcher even I do not have a Signal account. My conversation with Moxie about Signal convinced me that Signal cannot be trusted as they are obsessed with centralized control and user tracking, via app store stats. Privacy assurances come from enclaves internet randos can freely manipulate as they chose not to implement full source bootstrapped remote attestation. Also relying on app stores that can, with a court order, ship anyone an extra special fork of signal with compromised encryption, and they will never know. But F-Droid with independent control and reproducible builds? Unacceptable to Signal. Their stance is use proprietary partner platforms with their centralized servers so you can be tracked and backdoored at any time or GTFO. Centralized comms that force you to identify yourself and use proprietary software are an enemy of a free society. I do not understand the true goals of Signal, but their actions are inconsistent with their stated ones. This is not even getting started on their Mobilecoin premine scam that was a blatant conflict of interest and a wildly blatant violation of their non-profit charter given Moxies financial ties to Mobilecoin.

fwn 2mo ago
> [Signal is] obsessed with [...] user tracking, via app store stats. Not sure about that. You do not need Google Play Store to download or update Signal. I use Obtainium to update directly via signal.org for a very long time now. JSON: https://updates.signal.org/android/latest.json https://updates.signal.org/android/latest.json
- lrvick 2mo ago
  You can sideload (for now) but that forces you to enable "unknown sources" and increase the attack surface on your device, forcing you to reproduce every new release from source by hand to verify it was not compromised... or blindly sideload binaries and just hope your IP address was not served an extra special one. Moxie -knew- this was a path almost no one has time to use safely and liked it that way. He actively blocked attempts by the community to put Signal in f-droid, so in cases where it is the system package manager, automated signed reproducible builds can be updated painlesssly. By his own admission, moxie blocked convenient and secure community package managers because he wants most installs to happen from Google Play or the App Store so he gets analytics. In the end Molly made it to f-droid anyway and Signal has no way to stop it, but they actively discourage the use of any binaries they did not compile and cannot track and modify at any time.
  - fwn 2mo ago
    Reproducible builds are nice, and I would love to have them for Signal. But I think I disagree with most of what you've written. Enabling "unknown sources" does not make my device less secure. The setting is also disingenuously named: It is in fact "known sources" I am installing (not "sideloading") software from. It is just not a source Google wants to know of. I also do not need to reproduce every new release from source. It is a signed APK I'm getting from signal.org. If the antagonists in my threat model are so capable they could serve a tailored, signed APK from signal.org for the IP I'm using, I should absolutely not use a messenger whose identifier is my phone number, aka my real world identity AND permanent location marker. That feels absurd. A threat actor that capable could just locate me, pick me up and shake me until I unlock the device. You are saying Molly exists and works fine, so I'm not really sure the whole problematization of Signal holds up. Does the existence of Molly not disprove your criticism that users would have to use the mainline Signal app from the Play Store? I think it might be a good sign that criticism of Signal tends to presuppose absurdly capable threat actors. It suggests there is little low-hanging fruit left to criticize.

Cider9986 2mo ago

> is to fight privacy and always have the option to expose the real person behind that account whenever needed This post is FUD. Signal is about privacy. Nowhere do they mention anonymity as a goal of their messenger. They don't sacrifice contact privacy by using sealed sender (trustless) and by not keeping metadata (trust required that the server isn't malicious but proven in legal documents). It barely would help an investigation to know the identity of a Signal account. All they disclose is the account creation time [1] when handed a court order. [1] https://signal.org/bigbrother/district-of-columbia/ https://signal.org/bigbrother/district-of-columbia/

autoexec 2mo ago
That's outdated info. Currently signal collects your name, photo, phone number, and your contacts and permanently stores them in the cloud, weakly protected See: https://web.archive.org/web/20250117232443/https://www.vice.com/en/article/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250117232443/https://www.vice.... https://web.archive.org/web/20230519120156/https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096/2 https://web.archive.org/web/20230519120156/https://community...
- Cider9986 2mo ago
  It's an optional feature. Mathew Green has continued to use and recommend it. If you have the threat model to worry about Intel SGX being cracked, you will also know to use a long passphrase. You could also use a GrapheneOS phone with a weak pin, it makes it easier to access the data. You can use a long passphrase if you want to protect your data. It doesn't make GrapheneOS bad. Other apps can see that data themselves. It's not outdated, it's from March 2026.
  - autoexec 2mo ago
    It isn't an optional feature. If you decide not to create a pin one is created for you and your data is still uploaded to the cloud. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20230616082821/https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230616082821/https://old.reddi... https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ says "By design, it does not store a record of your contacts, social graph, conversation list, location, user avatar, user profile name, group memberships, group titles, or group avatars." However, today the reality is that signal collects your name, photo/avatar, and your contacts and stores it forever in the cloud.