Leander Lindahl 🇪🇺Thursday is a good day to delta with friends and family.
Switch a loved one to #DeltaChat – the decentralised secure open source messenger from Europe.
Jasper@leanderlindahl I'm slowly getting people on Signal, I doubt this here will happen.
But the screenshots imply desktop usage as a bigger thing? Could it be an alternative to small discord communities?
brainwashed by lentils@b0rn_dead @leanderlindahl
as #signal user, i've often wanted to use a separate profile for work, for personal and for activism. whenever you're in that situation, #deltachat is helpful.
if you ever find yourself communicating in a context where it would be bad if you're phone numbers are leaked (despite being set to "hidden" because that setting is broken), then it's time to switch from #signal to #deltachat for that.
honestly signal's whole phone number thing is about as un-private as #facebook's real-name policy.
Maypop the Dragon@pelle @b0rn_dead @leanderlindahl
the phone number requirement is actually worse because, unlike names, phone numbers are globally unique and you can't effortlessly just make one up.
edit: see reply. this is slightly wrong.
ok actually i accidentally did misinfo here oops. if court orders or data leaks are part of your threat model, it's worse, but otherwise it's less bad because you can hide it from other users by using a username.
@maypop_neocities yes, you •think• you can hide your number, because that's what the settings say, yet #signal will still leak your number, so it's actually even worse, because they give false promises of security.
does their reply to my bug report look reassuring to you?
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/13824
there are other such leaks.
Sebastian@pelle @maypop_neocities Yeah, the reply from #Signal looks perfectly reasonable. They told you why it would happen, they said they would change the UI (which they did) and they told you again why this could happen. What else do you want? That looks perfectly reasonable as far as responses go.
@moehrenfeld @maypop_neocities
they're polite, but they're wrong. i'm using #OpenContacts, therefore the system contacts was empty, so when they blame the leak on system contacts they're mistaken.
phone number can be visible despite the privacy setting saying "your phone number will not be visible to anyone," which is fine if phone number leaks are not an issue to you, but otherwise serious as authorities can identify an entire network of activists from a single captuted device. it puts people at risk.
another leak issue that's probably not fixed:
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/14222
@pelle @maypop_neocities The second issue was because the setting was not saved on the server side because there was an outage. I get why that is not good but still explainable. I don’t know what OpenContacts is but they didn’t blame it on the system contacts, they said that you maybe hat a chat before they started the feature and so you might have already had the number? And looking at the issue you said that that might have been the case. Where are they wrong?
@moehrenfeld @maypop_neocities
if your phone number may be visible to others, depending on compicated program logic (when you sign up; how contacts are stored on various phones; whether a setting has been enabled in the past; whether a server was available; etc) then it would be more accurate to write "your phone number may still be visible to others."
when #signal says that your number is hidden yet it may not be, then they are giving a false sense of security to users and preventing thrm from taking appropriate safety precautions. this is especially bad for an app that is advertised as safe for journalists and dissidents.
i think #deltachat does this the right way by simply not asking for your phone number.