Finally, we can have usernames in Signal instead of giving our phone number to everybody.
Too little too late, I’m afraid.
I would love to use Signal more, but I have it for only 1 friend. No one else I know uses it. And the fact that they don’t support SMS is I imagine a large contributing factor.
(Yes, I know SMS is inherently insecure & unprivate, but having that support is a good way to get users’ foots in the door, and also what good is a totally secure platform if no one uses it?)
I still luckily have a nice group of friends using Signal but I agree that dropping SMS support was a mistake. There was a good issue explaining why dropping SMS support was bad on their GitHub: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/12560
I genuinely appreciate that there are some people who have the benefit of a group of contacts who are willing to use it. I’m happy for you.
Also, that’s an interesting thread. Thanks for sharing it. :)
It’s never too late. “Back then”, when I started using Signal (called TextSecure), only one other single friend used it. Nowadays, almost all my personal contacts use it. Every additional Signal user adds a contact in someone other’s address book as a potential Signal contact. It just takes time. Good luck!
Okay, then, let me reiterate, for now it seems to be too little too late.
And thank you.
Sign-up still requires a phone number… -.-"
Checkout Matrix/Element
or Session,
there you can actually enjoy privacy by signing-up without a phone number/email:Edit: Due to Session’s company residing in Australia,
which appareantly has bad privacy laws,
i don’t feel comfortable with recommending it anymoreAh yes, Signal, known anti-privacy company
Sign-up still requires a phone number… -.-"
Thanks for the warning – that was my first question. It is my top reason (among many other reasons) for avoiding Signal.
Checkout Matrix/Element or Session,
All 3 of the sites you linked are Cloudflare sites (thus antithetical to privacy). Yes, I know you can use some of that tech without touching CF, but when they run CF websites it reveals hypocrisy & not understanding the goals of their audience.
If that’s a concern you could also always use Threema, which has been built from the ground up to use anonymous random IDs and optionally lets you link a phone number or e-mail address to that ID. The company has also won important court cases against having to store metadata preemptively and responding to blanket requests by law enforcement.
I never heard about Threema before,
quickly glanced at it’s Github repo,
but I think I prefer Matrix/Element over it.Threema seems to largely rely om GMS (Google Messaging Service),
meaning that most messages will go through Google’s servers,
albeit end-to-end encrypted for now,
I would not be suprised if Google would participate in “Harvest now, Decrypt later”.There’s actually an option to turn GMS off entirely if that’s a concern (Settings–>About–>Advanced). It comes at the cost of slightly increased battery usage. Sadly Google does have a bit of a monopoly on mainstream Android there.
Having said that, the messages themselves should never pass Google’s servers, just a packet saying “check your Threema server, there’s new stuff waiting for you.”
As usual, people are never satisfied. Never stop complaining.
Many years late, and still requires having your number. Good first step though, we’ll see once a phone number is not required.
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