
Signal for Beginners - heyAaronHatch
https://medium.com/@mshelton/signal-for-beginners-c6b44f76a1f0#.ti7v8i4l1
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mvdwoord
I have used Signal for a while, alongside Telegram and Whatsapp. I find the
fact that they are chrome apps / require your phone to be online very
annoying. Also I find signal regularly messes with the order of messages.

Right now I am testing with Wire, and waiting for proper pasting from
clipboard. Although I am concerned with privacy, and I applaud the efforts
from OWS, usability is more important to me. It will always be some sort of a
tradeoff I guess. Although things seem to be getting better I am saddened by
the lack of federation.

~~~
morganvachon
> _I find the fact that they are chrome apps...very annoying_

That's my biggest issue with Signal as well. I very recently (as in, over the
past two days) completely dropped Google from my life[1]. I switched from
Gmail to FastMail for email, calendar, and contacts, and FastMail also offers
10GB of file storage at their middle tier, which is about five times as much
space as I was using in Google Drive. I switched from Chrome/Chromium to
Firefox, and I'm currently trying to decide which photo backup service to use
to replace Google Photos. I'll probably run CollaboraOnline via a local
Nextcloud server for a good Google Docs replacement. I'm using StartPage for
search, as I find its results to be more relevant than DDG.

All of that said to say this: It's absolutely refreshing to break out of the
Google tar pit, and I'm very interested in a secure messaging app that doesn't
depend on them at all. Being free from 24/7/365 tracking, no matter if it's
"just for advertising purposes", is a breath of fresh air, as is knowing that
all my eggs are spread out among several baskets now.

[1] I do still have an Android phone (Nexus 6) but I switched from the
official Google ROM to the latest stable Cyanogenmod, and opted to not install
the Google apps bundle. My battery life has gone from about 30 hours between
charges to nearly 70 hours (as predicted by the battery meter; I haven't had
to charge it since I installed CM on Monday night and I'm at 81% as of
Wednesday morning). I've been using F-Droid for some great replacements for
many of my everyday apps, and the Amazon App Store for a few necessities like
Paypal and Fing. As on the desktop, I'm using Firefox on the phone mostly for
the syncing capability, though I will say the built-in browser on CM is
fantastic. Of course, I'm actively seeking a non-Android, non-Apple
alternative for a mobile phone, and right now the DragonBox Pyra is a front-
runner, with the Neo900 a close second.

~~~
tambourine_man
What about maps and transportation?

That battery life sure is impressive

~~~
mabramo
I can't speak for the above poster, but I will say that some GPS apps, such as
OsMand, are quite good. The catch is that you have to download the map for
your region to local storage and you totally lose search queries like "Find
the nearest Wafflehouse". In addition, OsMand specifically has a bit of a
learning curve to it where GMaps, among others, are search and go.

~~~
dublinben
While it doesn't have natural language searching yet, OsmAnd actually has very
powerful POI searching. You can search for POIs by name or category, and have
them displayed as either a list or points on the map.

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saycheese
Ironic that Moxie, who doesn't go by his real name and is the founder of
Signal, wants all of his users to identify themselves by providing their phone
number and IMEI numbers; IMEI or 'International Mobile Equipment Identity' is
a unique 15-digit number assigned to all cellular devices.

~~~
zachlatta
It's a usability problem. Can you think of anything easier? I can't.

~~~
wtbob
> Can you think of anything easier?

I think signal:wtbob works just as well as tel:+15551212, if we want to
continue to rely on OWS as a central identity provider.

I think that 'mom's dad's sister June' also works, if we want decentralised
identity.

~~~
privong
> I think signal:wtbob works just as well as tel:+15551212

That doesn't work as well for auto-discovery of other Signal users, though.
The latter enables auto-discovery based on people whose phone numbers are
already in one's contact books. With the former, one needs to collect other
people's usernames. It's not a tough thing to do, but it does make auto-
discovery difficult.

~~~
zeveb
> That doesn't work as well for auto-discovery of other Signal users, though.

It does if one's Contacts app stores Signal contact information for one's
contacts; then one could simply query using non-Signal information as the key
(e.g. one could ask, 'give me Signal contact information for tel:+15551212,
mailto:fizzbuzz@barquux.org and
[http://plus.google.com/SomeUserName'](http://plus.google.com/SomeUserName')).

~~~
privong
> one could simply query using non-Signal information as the key (e.g. one
> could ask, 'give me Signal contact information for tel:+15551212,
> mailto:fizzbuzz@barquux.org and
> [http://plus.google.com/SomeUserName'](http://plus.google.com/SomeUserName')).

That doesn't seem like a very good tradeoff because then it requires Signal to
store/compare _more_ personally identifying information (though I guess you
could make many of those things pseudo-anonymous).

~~~
wtbob
> That doesn't seem like a very good tradeoff because then it requires Signal
> to store/compare _more_ personally identifying information (though I guess
> you could make many of those things pseudo-anonymous).

Actually, it's possible to do even better that that: one can execute a private
set intersection protocol so that you & each of your contacts can discover
mutual contacts without revealing others.

Signal aren't required to store _any_ personally identifying information: they
choose to do so.

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ohstopitu
I want to add this here...very recently, my family was looking for a new
chatting app to use (I tried to get them to use Slack, but they found it a bit
too complicated). I really really wanted to use Signal (even with it not
having a bots API), but the fact that you need a phone number to sign up is a
no-go.

My question is..why do you need a phone number (which imo is way more
personal, than say an email?). Being security focused...would it not make
sense to have as much less info on the person as possible?

We have settled on kik for now. (although call support is lacking, i feel like
it'll be added eventually)

~~~
doubt_me
To make sure your connections are secure. You want to make sure the recipient
is who they are. So phone Numbers. Also probably because signal isn't a chat
app.

It's an sms/ MMS end to end app.

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a_imho
To me it feels Signal just wants to become the new WhatsApp more than
anything. Yes, I'm basing this on the gif support and that it requires a phone
number. The security argument only worked as long as whatsapp and co. did not
roll out e2ee. I could support a sincere attempt that want to do good which
OWS seemed to be doing, but now that they are competing on the emoji front
they have lost their edge for me*

*I don't really have a horse in this as I use none of them

~~~
bradyo
Except is rather everyone be using an open source, minimal logging version of
WhatsApp

~~~
heyAaronHatch
Presuming the signed app code is the same as the published source; and of
course we can't see the server code.

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725686
How does one know that the app being installed through an app store comes from
the public source code? Shouldn't I need to create and install my own APK from
source?

~~~
heyAaronHatch
The code can certainly be different than the public source.

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heyAaronHatch
If you haven't noticed, check out my comments in the article. I provide a
concerned, critical response arguing for why Signal might not be a good idea.
Or in the least, Mr. Shelton should explain the possible risks and dangers.

