Finally, been ages.
A number is still needed to register I believe.
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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Privacy
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Requiring a number is a good way to limit bots.
A PoW could limit bots too. Require say 30 seconds of work before your registration submits. For regular users that isnt to bad. For bots its a PITA to get tons of accounts
Edit: tor uses PoW as DDOS protection and its helped massively
PoW...Prisoner of war?
That will also keep away bots.
You can only sign up if you've taken at least one Prisoner of War. Bots can't take prisoners of war for obvious reasons.
Kinda like how Aztec boys came into age in their society.
Proof of work. Example, bitcoin
How does this prove anything if using an emulator to bulk register bot accounts? Also, Signal Desktop is a thing.
It was the original purpose of the bitcoin algorithm to limit spam.
If you have to do a lot of maths that takes your computer (for example) 30 seconds, that means it costs 30 seconds of compute to create an account. Nothing to an average user, for a spammer that wants thousands of accounts it gets expensive.
Several captcha[0] libraries already use this and it's great for accessibility (normal captchas are terrible for it)
[0] I know, it's not technically a captcha.
Accessibility is very important to me as a blind user, and this helps tremendously.
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Oh, neat. I was unfamiliar with PoW. Thanks!
Pow does not limit spam in bitcoin. Fees do. Pow is used as a decentralized election mecanism to distribute the block production.
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For each account you register, you have to do 30 seconds worth of work. So to register one account, you do 30 seconds worth of work. To register 100 accounts, you do 100*30 or 3000 seconds (50 minutes) worth of work. Registering tens of thousands of accounts then becomes unfeasible.
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A number is still needed to register I believe.
Indeed, which makes their headline a bit misleading. Giving Signal your phone number is not keeping it private.
I thought peoples big problem with it was not wanting to give others their number to use signal? Like I meet Joe Blog online and don't want to give him my real number to chat.
Less people worried that signal had their number?
Seems the second group is a vocal minority. This feature helps the first group, but doesn't help the second group.
According to Signal, the first group is the larger group and this helps the most users of Signal.
Could it be better? Sure. This is still a good step in terms of privacy, even though it doesn't really improve anonymity.
Its important to not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Personally, I care about the phone number requirement not because I don't want to reveal it to Signal servers, but because it limits access to Signal for people in countries that block their SMS service - registration messages just don't arrive
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Wrong, it still keeps it private but not anonymous. It's not the same concept and for most thread models knowing that you use Signal is not really an issue, especially since with this feature no one can check if you have one if you don't give them your username unless they have access to Signal servers in which case they still have nothing except the knowledge that you have an account.
They do a lot of work to keep your phone number private, or at least any data that is tied to it. This username upgrade is solely for someone to communicate over Signal without needing to hand over your phone number.
For example, you can now be in group chats with internet strangers by just giving them your username.
On top of that, once MLS is adopted, you can communicate with other messengers as well.
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Kinda stupid for privacy to hand over your phone number... Very counter intuitive
About time!! Been waiting for this for so long. This will definitely make the usability of Signal better and it'll also be more accessible to people who wanted a Telegram like way to talk to other folks. Requiring a number to still register isn't a bad thing in my eyes though sometimes it can be frustrating so I hope that there's an option to create an account without a number. Maybe the account will have finite time before it's auto-deleted if you don't input a number some time later to ensure that this option isn't abused to all hell by bots and malicious actors alike.
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I think its great. Its for people who simply don't want to share their phone number with other people which is a huge privacy concern, as you can find out a lot about a person by looking up info connected to their phone number.
Just yesterday, somebody commented that Signal might be adding the feature in a few weeks. I was incredulous, assuming it would be months.
Nope. As soon as I saw this, I went looking for an app update, installed it, and made a username.
To be fair, it has already been years
It has kinda been a meme that it's coming for years
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Great news. Thank you Signal
I'm still just so furious at Signal management for removing compatibility with other text apps. I used to be constantly growing my Signal network, now it's a slowly shrinking rump that I never add anyone to.
Wasn't that compatibility based on SMS which is inherently insecure?
Yes
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Relevant info about the username/accountid implementation: https://fosstodon.org/@link2xt/111965597727225353
This is important context. Signal needs to make phone numbers optional...
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Updated on iOS via US App Store - feature not available just yet. Looking forward to it in a few days perhaps!
found this in the article
Right now, these options are in beta, and will be rolling out to everyone in the coming weeks.
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It was nice to use it in nightly. It's good it came to stable.
Great feature, but if I'm reading it correctly, you won't be able to chat with someone anonymously (because your profile will still be shared). Are there good apps for that?
SimpleX was the best for my purposes when I looked, but Briar is a compelling option as well.
The case can also be made for element, but it lacks forward secrecy and honestly the app kinda sucks.
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