Seems I'm in the minority but having to use my phone number as identier is exactly why I don't use apps like this, including WhatsApp. I don't care if my username gets shared, but I do not want my phone number to be shared with a bunch of randoms.
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
106 points (93.4% liked)
Technology
59288 readers
4158 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Would you be more likely to use Signal if the username tests become mainstream? Then you wouldn't need to share your phone # with everyone.
As in use phone number to sign up but only share unique username. I'd still dislike having to use a phone number but being able to use such an app with family would be enough of a plus to finally get over it.
I use Signal because there are few viable alternatives, but I absolutely hate that it requires a phone number at all. Nothing should require a phone number, much less use it as a primary account ID. Phone numbers are not user IDs. They do not belong to users, they can be reassigned to different people by third parties, they are frequently controlled by corporations with horrible security practices.
Ironically, iMessage is much better in this regard. You can actually use it with just an Apple ID, which does not require a phone number, only an email address.
It sounds like Signal will still require a phone number but merely allow you to hide it. That's a big improvement, but still bad.
I remember when Signal used to be a drop-in replacement for SMS. It used phone numbers so you could automatically upgrade to secure messaging if your recipient also had Signal, and just use regular SMS otherwise.
Signal's automatic fallback to SMS was the best. Now they killed that and even have the audacity to ask for donations. Boo!
All the personal information you mentioned should be hashed or encrypted. For any given phone number, see how little information they have: just an account creation timestamp and a last access timestamp.
There's so much FUD about Signal it's ridiculous. I'm starting to believe those glowie memes are true it's just the "lol like I'd ever trust Signal!!!" folks who I think might be the glowies. 🫣🫣🫣
spoiler
(No I don't actually believe they're glowies lol).
My main complaint is that they officially prohibit 3rd party clients including 3rd party builds of their official ones. They also don’t have reproducible builds for their clients. It leaves the door wide open for inserting some telemetry via an update to completely bypass their otherwise good encryption and (lack of) data retention.
Would allowing third parties access to their server API just cause spammers to flood signal users.
They can already do that. You can make custom clients that pretend to be the real one, it’s just against their terms of service. Spammers generally don’t care about the ToS though, so it’s just legitimate users that are affected.
So if I claim fubo as a username on Signal, that means what? Nobody else can use that username? If so, it's another global namespace, same as Twitter; ten or twenty years in the future, someone's gonna want to be reclaiming disused usernames.
(What if I want to be fubo to some people, and MissCatPictures to other people? Can I do that from one phone? One phone number?)
In the current Staging implementation, you pick a username (which you can change), and the app picks a two-digit suffix to your username.
Oh, so can I keep trying until I get to be fubo69? Nice.
(I am a heavy Signal user; it's my primary messaging service for people I know IRL. It's where I post cute pictures of my housemates' cats. I really want the Signal folks to get stuff right and not mess it up.)
Sure, unless the username+suffix is already taken.
What if I want to be
fuboto some people, andMissCatPicturesto other people?
Use SimpleX
The question is about the functionality of signal
I meant only to address what I specifically quoted. The feature of using multiple identities, separately for each contact, is baked right into SimpleX and works amazingly well.
Sounds neat, I'll look into it
What if I want to be fubo to some people, and MissCatPictures to other people?
Jami allows that, and I think Cwtch does as well. SimpleX doesn't have usernames at all.