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If it's not, let us know a solution (to Signal's actual problem as stated in the GP) that is more private.
by mmooss 4d ago
If it's not, let us know a solution (to Signal's actual problem as stated in the GP) that is more private.
- snackbroken 4d agoOne possible solution is to only be able to contact someone if you have received an invitation code from them out of band. E.g. "scan this QR code to add me on signal". Such an invitation code should default to single-use but users should be allowed to generate standing invitations so that businesses and the like can print and post one in their store or whatever. Start getting spam from one of your standing invitations? Just revoke it and make a new one. Presumably the Signal folks can come up with more alternative solutions than the half baked one I came up with after thinking about it for a minute, they're clever cookies.
- fn-mote 4d agoWelcome back to “key signing parties”. PGP never got enough adoption. At least Signal is simple enough that the (ahem) leaders of the US can (mostly) manage to use it.
- chews 4d agoLeaders of the US use an Israeli backdoored version of Signal (TM-Signal) TeleMessage by Smarsh was used by DOD, CPB, and others for records retention reasons... also hacked to smithereens.
- upofadown 3d agoUnfortunately, in an end to end encrypted messaging system, an identity is denoted by some sort of long number. That is an inescapable fact. Trusting a third party to correctly map, say, a phone number to a cryptographic identity number eventually results in the sort of attacks we have been seeing with phone oriented encrypted messengers recently like WhatsApp and Signal. The PGP people were doing the right thing when they were doing education in the form of key signing parties. That is something the user needs to know. Anonymous messengers have no real choice and have to use some sort of number for identity. See Briar, Session or Tox for examples. My comments on Signalgate 1.0: https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=em:sg https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=em:sg
- mmooss 3d ago> attacks we have been seeing with phone oriented encrypted messengers recently like WhatsApp and Signal Could you give an example of an actual attack of this kind on Signal? The 'Signalgate' event was someone mistakenly inviting the wrong person to a chat.
- some_furry 4d agoRequiring manual key verification is a bad design that doesn't scale or benefit most people.
- snackbroken 4d agoPeople seem to get on with Discord invite links just fine. You don't have to do the "confirm that all these emoji are the same on both your devices" dance to stop spam.
- mmooss 4d ago> People seem to get on with Discord invite links just fine. Discord is used by a narrow group of technically literate people. Signal is for everyone. Your grandparents probably don't use Discord, but if they can text then they can use Signal.
- mmooss 4d agoImagine setting up a chat for an organization you're working with - will you be willing to process 20 out-of-band QR codes? 50? On a smaller scale, it's clear that Signal believes a functioning address book is necessary for end user adoption. For example, by default Signal notifies you of people in your phone contacts who are on or who later join Signal. > Presumably the Signal folks can come up with more alternative solutions I have yet to see a solution better than the one they chose, for their requirements. Notice that there are none in this discussion.