I remember a time when visiting a website that opens a javacript dialog box asking for your name so the message “hi <name entered>” could be displayed was baulked at.
Why does signal want a phone number to register? Is there a better alternative?
Haven’t seen anyone link this here so I’ll link it myself
https://dessalines.github.io/essays/why_not_signal.html
Some things are outdated, like how you had to give others your phone number (although it’s still necessary for signup) but most of these still hold up
ignore the comment saying signal is “end to end encrypted” “private” etc
Jami, as much as I prefer it on various philosophical grounds, simply doesn’t work very well at the moment. :(
And we should report problems and fix them ourselves to make it better
Based
Yeah I’m on their Discourse forum, but the situation isn’t that great, and it’s unclear to me if the problems are fixable. Particularly when there are incompatibilities between version X and version Y, where both versions are already in the wild. You can’t travel backwards in time to fix those versions, and this (like email clients or telephones) is an application area where you can’t tell people to update their clients all the time. You have to keep things interoperable.
It’s also often inconvenient to reproduce bugs like that in order to diagnose them. If you try to talk to someone over Jami and it doesn’t work, you generally can’t borrow their phone to analyze the issue. If you’re one of the core developers, maybe you have access to a room full of different kinds of phones and OS versions to test with, but a typical user/contributor won’t have anything like that.
Yeah, this is just the reality of unpaid free software developers, they don’t have the recourses to work on every single bug as quick as a paid developer, but that doesn’t justify not reporting bugs and working with the developers to fix them. Like you said, Jami is grest ethically so why not make it great function? Also, don’t you have a computer and a phone? Test on those. I don’t own a phone, so I can’t test the phone, but I do gladly test on my laptop.
You can easily verify the keys of the person you’re speaking with, and they’re generated locally… so technically speaking, even if their servers are leaking, your messages are still unreadable, but yea that’s not ideal
Not when it’s backdoored. So, tell the guy above there’s a fully libre copy.
? Even if the servers are backdoored, your messages are still encrypted by your key - as long as the server didn’t manipulate the keys at the first exchange, which you can check by verifying the security code
If it matches, then it’s okay. Such features exist in all encrypted messenger apps
The app, not the server.
Molly.im is a Signal Client fork with Security enhancements and the possibility to install a version with only free software.
Great, but it relies on signal’s servers, so it’s centralised. Also, Moly merely removes proprietary parts from Signal, but that’s a workaround (same thing for linux-libre kernel, it’s free software, but just a workaround which is why I’m looking to help with HyprbolaBSD). I’m not coming here to say Molly isn’t an improvement, but being centralised and relying on a non-tully-free program’s servers is a huge red flag for me :)
It doesn’t matter whether a server claims to run free software or not. You can’t verify what it’s running. That’s why E2EE is designed entirely around the client. You can’t trust the server no matter what.
Did anyone say that was the problem? It will not matter how encrypted your messages are when the centralised service gets easily banned.
Yeah the comment I responded to did
Directly above, doesn’t look like it.
You should have visited Signal’s github page first, I dunno. Before talking. Made up a lot of stuff.
They do have proprietary code for that crypto wallet they have there, well hidden, and for, eh, phone number registration, but other than that module it’s all released, I think.
The server and the client applications are FOSS. You can host it for yourself, patching out the domain names and registration parts the way you like it more.
I didn’t actually know the server code was published. It’d be cool if the client allowed multiple servers so you could talk to people on the “normal” master while also thing a private instance
I think choosing a server, like in some ICQ clients, is not a complex modification.
They had it implemented but discarded it out of stupid centralization ideology. Moxie said it on a Chaos communication Congress presentation he held but which he didn’t wanted to be recorded, as the stuff he said was stupid and wrong.
That’s not the full picture. That’s exactly the problem I was highlighting. The issue isn’t whether some of the code is “FOSS”, it’s about whether all of it is. If even small parts remain proprietary (as you mentioned), then we can’t verify what those parts are doing. And those parts could theoretically significantly affect the data collection. Also, I didn’t make up a lot of stuff. The Signal Foundation themselves have confirmed that certain UI and build components are not fully libre. As the GNU project puts it, if part of your system is closed, then you’re trusting a black box, no matter how well-lit the rest of it is.
Signal protocol guarantees that what’s on the server we can discard in your suspicions, it doesn’t matter, because you are not trusting it.
The client is fully open.
If it’s not fully free, I don’t trust it. I don’t understand how someone in a privacy community doesn’t understand how much a few lines of code can track someone so easily no matter how much of the program is free software.
You are trusting the server, or do you verify the fingerprint of EVERY contact of yours? The normal people don’t, as Signals UI purpusfully doesn’t encourages it.
Spam prevention
And discovery.
It’s not an argument. Think about regular mobile numbers, are they preventing spams? No.
Are you seeing spam on signal? Do you even know why spam is possible on phone networks and what the difference is between phone networks and the internet?
I don’t know what is spam for you, but when you get three message requests from three girls respectively named Tania, Clara and Ella that are contacting you about you carrier or your management skills, I call it spam.
The way that Signal integrates phone number is odd because it opens up the spam door. O understand why Signal use phone numbers this way (to make “normies” adopt Signal more easily like WhatsApp would do) but it not the best to kind of contaminate the network with the traditional cell network
The point, I believe, wasn’t about spam but likely got derailed. It was probably about the phone number requirement being unnecessary. I’ll just add that even if it is, it’s a measure geared towards common users that often need to recover access to their accounts through means they’re already familiar with, as is a verification SMS. It’s not the safest nor the most private, but it’s easier to deal with for most people. Whoever wants something that doesn’t depend on a SIM or eSIM should try Briar and SimpleX. None of these will be a perfect solution for every single person though.
Because Signal has a low user base. Why Spam on Signal, if you can reach everyone with an SMS?
What kind of spam are you talking about
Scams, girls wanting to chat with you, incredible money opportunities…
It’s focused on ensuring there is no middleman between you and the other party, but it does not have a goal to provide anonymous messaging. Sadly.
Signal IS the middleman.
THATS WRONG! Signal Server can just do a man in the middle as you try connecting to your contact for the first time. You need to verify the fingerprint manually which is not very obvious and present in the UI. In SimpleX.chat you automatically verify the fingerprint, as its the way to establish the chat to your contact and is included in the way you distribute the contact to you.
no middleman
Signal is not P2P
No but it’s e2ee.
Of course. Sorry, but I meant no middleman as in minifying the role of the server in your messahing. Signal’s goal is to ensure the server cannot have access to your messages and its only role is to receive and send data.
Bots. If it makes you feel better, you can disable other people finding you via phone number and just give them your username. All messages are private.
But the police request the meta data of all messages from your phone number that the company has and they’re required by law to give them it.
These are all the court orders Signal has complied to and details all the information they give up
https://signal.org/bigbrother/
TLDR; they only give the last time the account connected to Signal servers and the time of account registration or re-registration
You should go properly read the requests from law enforcement they have received and exactly what information it contains. It’s public. Then evaluate if it matters for yur threat model. Security doesn’t exist in a vaccum.
Secret sender stops any real amount of information about messages being connected to you
Its encrypted
Messages are e2e encrypted. Metadata is not encrypted.
Yes it is. Signal isnt PGP email. A lot of work went into protecting metadata.
People told you a few times to go look for yourself what Signal can give away. Its protocol descriptions are pretty understandable.
The whole bloody reason it’s always recommended is because it’s absolutely the best thing in terms of yes, encrypting metadata. It’s state of the art, level above that bullshit you’re thinking.
Unfortunately, that also means that hosting it takes lots of resources, which means they have to screen bots and mults somehow. Phone numbers are one way. Paid accounts are another.
Phone numbers are one way. Paid accounts are another.
Rubbish. How would this stop bots? Bots are created to make money. What makes you think creators don’t have a phone number, or be prepared to pay to spam.
One account per phone number versus infinity of accounts without.
signal accounts… signal accounts everywhere!
Phone numbers cost money, which means they’re not easy to create in bulk, and therefore banning or blocking spam numbers is much easier than if it was open sign up.
what? can you show a source? I think you mixed it up with Matrix
They can “request” it all day long. Signal doesn’t store them beyond the time needed to deliver to the end user device, and while (temporarily) stored, it’s encrypted in a way Signal’s service cannot read.
The phone carrier at least here in the US is required to store the call data for 18 months, according to the one that I use.
What does that have to do with Signal?
The claim is that Signal’s phone verification step doesn’t cause privacy problems because Signal (purportedly) doesn’t retain the phone numbers after verification. That claim is falsified because the phone carrier stores the call record even if Signal doesn’t. They store it because of the same law that makes them turn it over to Big Brother on demand. The phone verification step is, therefore, a privacy problem. Obviously there are similar issues with IP routing, but at least I can use a VPN with an endpoint in another country.
The “record” is a SMS verification code. All that will tell the government is that you registered for Signal, nothing else.
Telling the govt that you registered for Signal sounds like a bad failure as far as I’m concerned, e.g. if you are a user in a repressive regime. Do you think Trump would like to get his hands on a list of all the Signal users in the US? Probably yes. What would he do with the list? IDK but it has to be bad. So it should be an objective of Signal to make it impossible for anyone to create such a list.
Anyway, it sounds like Signal has wised up and is getting rid of the phone number requirement. I don’t understand why people here keep defending the misfeature. I’ve heard such things explained as “system justification” but I still don’t understand it. All of us make poor decisions all the time, but we should at least make some effort to recognize them, and fix them when possible.
No, that wasn’t the claim. Phone numbers are used for sign up, but the post’s OP was talking about messaging meta data. Messaging meta data doesn’t go through your carrier and is encrypted.
If you check the publication of signal’s cases where they had to hand out data, and in reverse the FBI leak that listed analysis of all messenger apps by what data they were able to acquire in most cases, Signal came out as one of the top options.
huh? so the phone number is encrypted in a way that can’t be read, but an sms is sent to the phone? … a separate company sends the text on behalf of signal? so that separate company logs the phone number, the timestamp and who knows what else.
What are you on about right now? I don’t mean that sarcastically, I really am wondering what your concern is. Are you concerned that because your phone number is associated with Signal that police will know you use Signal?
Signal doesn’t use SMS anymore, and all messages are sent over encrypted Internet protocol. Any servers in between won’t see the phone number, it’s not needed to deliver the message, it’s using an IP address at that point and the entire message metadata is encrypted. Signal is the only one that can see the phone numbers, which they use to identify multiple clients as a single user and route messages accordingly.
Signal doesn’t use SMS at all, once you have enrolled. The phone number is used to validate people and exclude bots, during registration. As others have noted, you can hide your number from other users, as well.
Session is an alternative that does not require, or request, your phone number (or any other identifying information). Honestly, I have no idea why Signal got popular and Sessions did not. As soon as Signal asked for my phone number that set off alarm bells for me and I’ve never really trusted it since.
According to privacyguides.org, Session is listed under this message:
These messengers do not have forward secrecy, and while they fulfill certain needs that our previous recommendations may not, we do not recommend them for long-term or sensitive communications. Any key compromise among message recipients would affect the confidentiality of all past communications.
Link: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication/#additional-options
This is incredibly important. Signal is considered the “gold standard” of encrypted and private communication for a reason.
Thanks for this link but your username also makes this pretty sus. 😜
This is a privacy community lol, I think you know why people use throwaways.
privacyguides.org have been a reputable source of information, also you aren’t suppose to just click hyperlinks without hovering over it and verifying that it is a trustwothy link anyways.
Isn’t Session the one with insane username strings?
Yes. That was how they avoided using identifying information from their users.
So the reason Session never took off is probably because exchanging contact information is a big hassle, effectively barring users looking for convenience?
Session is the one with broken security.
I don’t know that their security is “broken”. It may be, I don’t know. But also without anything that connects you to any particular message, it seems that – in itself – is a pretty good form of security.
I just don’t get why people accept Signal’s justification for requiring a phone number. They absolutely don’t need to (session proves that). It is certainly possible for them to say, “If you register without a phone number and access to your phone book then you will lose automatic discoverability by other users of Signal — meaning that you need to find another (physical) way to exchange your Signal username with your contacts”. They CAN do this. I think many users, like myself, would be fine with this tradeoff for greater anonymity. For some reason, they have steadfastly refused. The reasoning behind this refusal is what bothers me.
I think it’s important to remember de difference between being private and being anonymous. Signal IS private. It’s not anonymous. The same is true for many other apps/services.
Personally I like to be private. I don’t really need to be anonymous.
Privacy ≠ Anonymity ≠ Security
Signal fills an incredibly important spot in a spectrum of privacy and usability where it’s extremely usable without sacrificing very much privacy. Sure, to the most concerned privacy enthusits it’s not the best, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to convince friends and family to use Signal than something like Matrix.
Because it’s centralized, I prefer SimpleX.
What an answers. Completely nonsense
in the end of the day, the end user needs an id. this is perfect for the everyday user, but obviously if you are writing anti regime articles, you might want to look around for more anonim apps.
We have to assume we are all writing anti regime articles … In the future
perfect for the everyday user
…because of course, they don’t need privacy, do they now. “Nothing to hide” and all that jazz.
Is there a quick explanation of what signal actually does? I don’t understand the need for a phone number either. Jami doesn’t ask for a phone number. It has other deficiencies that make me not want to use it, but those are technical rather than policy, more or less. Similarly, irc (I’m luddite enough to still be using it) doesn’t ask for a phone number either. So this is all suspicious. There are a bunch of other things like this too (Element, Matrix, etc.) that I haven’t looked into and tbh I don’t understand why they exist.
It’s not suspicious. It’s been talked about for years. People know exactly what the phone number is used for. Easy discoverability, quick and seamless onboarding of new users by providing a way to bootstrap their social graph, and it being very similar to the process of the other biggest player that people just understand. And spam prevention. The phones are not leaked or used for anything else. The other alternatives exist and you are welcome to onboard the people you want onto them if you think it’s simpler.
The code is open, if you don’t trust other people and can’t read the code to understand then hire someone you trust to validate the claims and assure you. But spreading FUD and saying it’s suspicious is not productive to anyone.
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I don’t understand what you mean about discoverability: is my presence on the network advertised to strangers and spammers? That doesn’t sound good. What does the onboarding process look like?
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You still haven’t said what Signal’s advantages are supposed to be over alternatives, though I can guess some (e.g. better/more crypto than irc has). Jami seems conceptually ok, but buggy in implementation. Nextcloud Talk works but is kind of clunky. Matrix is popular though I’ve never used it: is it the main alternative to Signal these days? I thought it was what all the hipsters had migrated to while luddites like me were still on irc. Jitsi Meet looks nice though again I haven’t explored it much. I’ve been puzzled for a long time that there is so much work in this area yet everything has deficiencies. Are there difficult problems to solve?
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If Signal’s code is open then of course I’d want to self-host the server. Can I do that? Does that get in the way of the onboarding process you mention? Where does the phone number come in, in that case? If I to use Signal’s server, that doesn’t sound so open, and normally there’s no way for me to verify that it’s running the same code that they claim.
I don’t see where I’m spreading FUD. Ignoring a question and calling it FUD doesn’t invalidate the question.
You can’t easily selfhost Signal. They engineered it purposefully to only run on Big Tech Clouds with specific Intel CPUs they put (too much) trust in.
Very interesting, thanks. Do you mean they use SGX (Intel’s buggy secure enclave feature)? Any idea what they use it for? If not SGX, do you know what the issue is? AMD Epyc processors have something similar but different, fwiw. If there is such highly secret info on the server though, that makes self-hosting even more important. It also makes the architecture suspect.
Yes SGX, they use it for sealed Sender, contact discovery and mobilecoin.
- Yes, kinda, if they have you in their contact books, they get a notification you joined.
Thanks. The more I think about it, the more this seems like outright evil behaviour on Signal’s part to pursue user growth, similar to Facebook etc. Imagine that you and your boss are in each other’s contacts for obvious work-related reasons. Do you really want Signal notifying your boss that you registered for Signal? For some of us it’s fine, but in general it seems like a terrible idea.
- You can easily migrate everyone from WhatsApp to Signal and they don’t have to exchange usernames as most people have the phonenumbers in their contacts. (This has massive drawbacks addressed somewhere else, one lesser known fact is that they would have to verify fingerprints anyway to be sure they are speaking to the right person an not a proxy. Instead of that they could also exchange username+fingerprint initially, like Simplex does it.)
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Signal is a messenger service. You can expire messages after a certain amount of time.
They ask for a phone number to limit bots. I used my Google voice number and it worked fine. I like Telegram which banned me after a day of use for using Google Voice.
I get that Signal is a messaging system (not sure if “messenger service” has a specific meaning). What I don’t understand is why I’d want to use it instead of any of the million others that are out there. I’ve never used Signal and don’t have the slightest clue about how it operates, but apparently it tries to mess with the contact list on your phone? That sounds bad. I use Nextcloud Chat sometimes and its web design is ugly, but it works ok and you can self-host it fairly easily. It doesn’t do anything with your phone contacts. Jami is distributed but (maybe unrelated) I often have trouble getting it to work at all.
It doesn’t “mess with your contacts”. You can choose to give contacts access if you wish to have secure contact discovery. Contacts are not uploaded.
It’s robustly encrypted and quantum secure, without metadata leaks like the sender of a message.
It’s recommended by Edward Snowden.
If you want to message someone, have the ability to verify there is no man in the middle attack, have perfect forward secrecy, very strong crypto, use open source software and still have all the conveniences of a modern message app, use signal.
CONTACTS ARE UPLOADED
Robust encryption isn’t useful if you don’t verify the fingerprint and signal makes that not intuitively.
SIGNAL CLIENT HAS UNFREE SOFTWARE INCLUDED
Contacts are never uploaded
Hashes of some numbers are if you enable contact discovery
Verifying keys is easy, what are you talking about?
Do you mean the client side is open source? What about the server? If you’re required to use Signal’s server, how do you know it’s not disclosing metadata? If you can self-host it, why the phone number?
The idea is you don’t need to trust the server
Messages sent don’t contain a readable sender field
Mobile numbers may not be necessary long term, architecture depends on accounts being created Witt phone numbers. Usernames were very recently introduced. Soon we may see requirement for phone number dropped, unless related to spam control
The wikipedia article looks informative and I will read through it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)
Is spam a serious problem on other messaging systems?
You trust the server if you don’t verify fingerprints. Signal makes that too difficult.
Sealed sender is a theater that you can enable but still have to trust Intel, aws and the signal server.
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I’m sure that just sets the database column
hide_phonenumberto TRUE.I see an option to change it, not delete. It’s still attached to a SIM card which requires identity verification in many states.
deleted by creator
When anyone get a copy of your data, nothing will bring it back.
Privacy ≠ anonymity
Our numbers are not private from Signal. Do not let this derail us. Escaping to libre software is the best return on investment.
It’s libre software. Go host the server and change the clients to connect to your custom server and distribute to the users you need.
How? i wanted to do that but the client doesn’t let you use another server? Host file ?
nvm, re-read what you wrote. i agree it does fulfill the criteria for libre software. perhaps not in every way to the same spirit as other projects 1, but that is indeed a separate discussion.
1 which technically possible, i’m not
The barrier is that only you and your friends would be using that Fignal or Xignal or whatever home installation, and for that practically, for ease of use, it’s simpler to host Matrix which even a complete idiot can do.
You could change it to use multiple servers but changing app is faster.
So, escaping WhatsApp and Discord, anti-libre software, is the most important part.
Are you saying I have to literally rebuild and distribute my own client APK if I want to use my own server? There’s no “settings” in the existing client where you say what server you want to use, like every email client has? That sounds obnoxious.
If you don’t trust Signal to run an unmodified server without malicious modifications, then why would you trust their build of the APK?
To truly be safe from Signal’s influence you would need to audit the source code and build it yourself.
Personally I have no problem using Signal’s servers
To truly be safe from Signal’s influence you would need to audit the source code and build it yourself.
Usually I only install APK’s from F-Droid, which always builds its apps from source, rather than using the developer’s APK. I’m uncomfortable that Signal doesn’t seem to be on F-droid, and I’m in fact hesitant to install it from anywhere else. I’m not currently set up to build Android apps myself. I’m a fairly unsophisticated Android user.
Signal on Android has had reproducible builds for years now.
Sources: Github Readme, Official blog post
Thanks. I’m not a sophisticated Android user and so far have just stayed with installing stuff from F-droid. If the official build matches the F-droid build, that’s great. At some point I want to spend some time bringing up Android build tools, but I have too much other stuff going on right now.
You can use Obtainium and get it straight from Github.
I just checked and I installed Signal from F-Droid.
It says Repository: Guardian Project on the app page.
Interesting, I wonder why it’s not in the main F-droid repo. Thanks.
Agreed, escaping WhatsApp and Discord is the most important part.
Because their founder (Marlinspike) is probably under a National Security Letter, maybe it’s just that, maybe he’s done some crimes they’re also holding over him. If you look at his behavior it’s that of someone very paranoid that they’re going to be found out to be cooperating with the feds and get hit with charges for not upholding the bargain, someone straddling one or two big lies that have to be maintained to keep their life going. Very controlling of things they should be open about if they care about privacy as they claim. But exactly the behavior of someone under an NSL who’s terrified of getting hit with charges for that and maybe other things but who is expected to front and run a purported privacy first messenger. The secrecy, the refusal to allow others to operate their own servers, the antagonism towards federation, the long periods without publishing source code updates.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that signal message content is compromised, the NSA primarily scrapes metadata and would most care about knowing who is talking to who and to put real names to those people and building graphs of networks of people. Other things like what times they talk can be inferred from upstream taps on signals servers without their knowledge or cooperation via traffic observation and correlation especially when paired with the fourteen eyes global intercept network. With a phone number it’s also a lot easier to pinpoint an exact device to hack using a cooperating (or hacked) telecom. Phone numbers can also be correlated to triangulated positions of devices, see who in a leftist protest network was A) heavily sending messages and B) attended that protest and left last and begin to infer things about structure and particular relationships.
And those saying it has to do with spam prevention, that’s kind of nonsense. First I still get the occasional spam, second a phone number that can receive a confirmation text is something all these criminal organizations have access to which the average person doesn’t. Third it’s possible to prevent spam just by looking for people (especially new accounts under 120 days old) sending very small amounts of messages (1-3) to a very large amount of other users especially in a short amount of time. Third there’s no reason to keep the phone number tied to the account, a confirmation text could be required with a promise to delete the phone number immediately after (would still be technically useful to the NSA though less useful for keeping track of people changing numbers or using a burner for this who might be higher value targets).
I have never received spam on Signal.
I got one one time, been using it for years. Fuckin’ weird to try on people who are privacy and security conscious. My guess is that they were attempting to see what numbers are using signal in the first place if someone responds with a “fuck off” then the spammer knows they use signal.
I have exactly once as did a couple of my friends from the same stranger.
Secret sender invalidates your metadata argument
That is a pretty weird post that doesn’t make much sense, but I remember meeting Moxie and asking him about Android security and being surprised at how defensive he was about it. Is Signal the app he was working on? That helps somewhat. I get them confused with each other.
The Signal app doesn’t appear to be on F-droid, which is a bit discomforting.
