Comment by nottorp
2 years ago
... but then Signal wouldn't have your phone number either. What they need it for is ... dubious if you ask me.
2 years ago
... but then Signal wouldn't have your phone number either. What they need it for is ... dubious if you ask me.
> ... 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.
Yeah, 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!)
If you need privacy without usability just exchange pubkeys with your friends?
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> 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.
> Do people really expect to still exchange phone numbers
Yes. This is the norm in the US.
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But then it's not private. It's linked to your phone number.
You 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.
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Luckily there are other messaging services that are private if you’re going to be that pedantic about it.
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>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...
But that's also a barrier to actual users, which would be counter-productive.
> 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?
I 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
The claim (which generally I'm inclined to believe) is that requiring a phone number drastically increases the cost to sending spam. That in turn drastically reduces the spam amount.
To me Signal is in the business of collecting metadata and nothing else (for whom, that is a good question: probably some three letter agency).
Perhaps you need a refresher in Signal Protocol.
Do not be sprouting on about things that you do not understand.
https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf
The parent is right: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39414322
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What they need it for is simply that it's the way the system has always worked, because Signal started life as an encrypted replacement for SMS. The point was that you could switch from the standard SMS app you were already using over to Signal (which was called "TextSecure" at the time) without having to change your habits, because sending messages to people's phone numbers was simply what people did then. There's nothing nefarious about it.