@fae2535 @signalapp

I don't know if people you block see this message or not. At least in my case my contact has definitely not blocked me, since they don't even have my number yet to block, because the Signal app prevented me from sending them a first message. My contact also told me to send them a message, which is not what you would expect someone to say if they want to block you.

As for friends who send too many messages, it's important to respect boundaries but personally I see blocking as a last resort. Sometimes simply explaining your situation to a friend and asking them to be mindful about how often they send you messages can help to preserve or strengthen a friendship, but we all have different strategies for dealing with this.

@signalapp

Unfortunately I've been experiencing a bug in Signal since a few days preventing me from messaging a new contact. The app displays a captcha before I can send a message, but after I successfully complete the captcha, the app just shows me a brief error message which says "failed to submit" and the message which I tried to send is left in "pending" state and does not get sent.

The app doesn't indicate any reason for the failure and any attempt to send another message results in the same error. Therefore the message sending functionality is essentially broken. Will this bug be fixed soon?

@0xabad1dea

That's wild!

@gopal

Thanks for your reply.

"I don't think signal is blocking the VPN. The issue is most likely the VPN is assigning an IP address that is considered as a spam source by signal's spam detection code"

Effectively that would amount to the same thing.

I tried to send another message, only this time the captcha didn't appear at all and instead Signal showed me a very dark page which just said:

Webpage not available
The webpage at https://signalcaptchas.org/challenge/generate.html could not be loaded because: net::ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED

So it seems their captcha is even more broken now! And it still won't let me send any messages.

I still haven't switched off my VPN but I might have to do that next, unfortunately. I find it disappointing that I even need to consider this.

Like you, I am currently using Orbot as my VPN and, until now, I hadn't experienced this kind of problem with Signal, which is why I was surprised when it happened. And since the captcha failed to submit even with different circuits, it seems they are blocking the entire tor network, essentially blocking anyone using the Orbot VPN.

Thanks for the molly recommendation. I had heard about that before but haven't tried it and I didn't know it directly supports tor on the app. I will keep that in mind in future, although if Signal is blocking IP addresses for the tor network, I assume a molly user would be blocked by Signal just the same.

Thanks again for your suggestions!

@signalapp

#signal #captcha #privacy #signalapp #vpn #orbot #tor #molly

@gopal

It's happening on the phone app. Yes, I am using a VPN but I'd really prefer not to switch it off if possible, only as a last resort. I mean Signal is meant to be a privacy app after all, so forcing people to switch off their VPN seems like a really bad idea to me.

Anyway thanks for this suggestion and your insight (it didn't cross my mind to think Signal was blocking VPNs and I haven't experience this issue before) and maybe I will need to do this if I can't find a more acceptable solution or Signal doesn't fix the issue. It seems like a bug to me, but maybe it's intentional, I don't know at this point.

It's disappointing that the app gives me no reason why it fails, just the cryptic "failed to submit" appearing briefly with no further info. I was surprised to see the captcha appear at all, and baffled when I passed the captcha and nothing happened, leaving my messages in "pending" sent-but-not-sent state.

What's the point of showing me a captcha, only to fail anyway after I successfully pass the captcha just because I'm using a VPN? And it doesn't even tell me what's going wrong! I mean, if I already passed the captcha, what more does it want? (Rhetorical question not directed at anyone, just finding this experience rather frustrating, and the idea that any app, especially a privacy-focused one like Signal, would compel users to switch off their VPN is not a pleasant thought. Sorry for rambling a bit. I appreciate your insight! Still hoping there's a beter solution that doesn't involve turning off my VPN.)

@signalapp

Unfortunately there is a bug preventing me from messaging a new contact. The app is showing me a captcha before I can send a message, but even after I successfully complete the captcha, and the captcha says that I verified correctly, it just shows me a brief error message which says "failed to submit" and the message doesn't send but seems to be in a weird suspended state! Is there any way to resolve this issue? Help appreciated!

#signal #privacy #captcha

@jonhicks @jwcph

OK, false red flag! Firefox and Safari are currently missing some of the APIs which Pikimov uses.

@jwcph @jonhicks @Vivaldi

And it signals they have no interest in supporting browser diversity or independence from Google, and they don't value Gecko or WebKit users. Red flag. There was a time when web developers used to prioritize cross browser support!