Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive

u_tamtam@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 606 points –
Privacy is Priceless, but Signal is Expensive
signal.org
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Ehhhh

Signal lost a lot of my love when they removed SMS support

Get with the times.

Signal stands for privacy and not selling your data to be spied on and sold, and you're STILL using SMS, spam ridden, high cost, old infrastructure, easily read, technology.

I suppose you want email in your Signal client too?

It's not about that. It's about moving people over.

You know why RCS is picking up steam? Because it's 1 app. If the person you're talking to has RCS, you'll send messages via RCS. If they don't, it'll fall back to SMS. If RCS was a separate app from SMS, adoption would be really low.

Older people especially don't want to juggle 2 apps. If you get your dad on signal, and then his friend who uses SMS messages him, he'll be back in his SMS app and won't go back to signal, meaning the next time he messages you, or anyone else that has signal, he'll instead just send an SMS since he's already in the SMS app.

Removing SMS fallback was a surefire way to kill adoption of signal.

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Especially when your identity on Signal is STILL only tied to a phone number, instead of a username, and there is nothing less private than actually giving out your real phone number.

Absolutely baffling.

I heard they gonna introduce usernames for sharing your acc. but to make one u still need a phone to create an acc. which I understand.

so just like in telegram?

Yes, except telegram will track u and stuff, u guys don't know the point of Signal?

Giving out a phone number harms anonymity, which is something they never claimed to give you.

I'd like not having to use my number as much as you, but lets be angry about it for the right reasons, at least

sms is useless tho?
it's basically a confirmation code delivery system, with some ads and spam

It's not useless in western countries. We don't all have our entire country communicating via Metas WhatsApp lol

Do you maybe mean USA when you say "western country"? Living in Europe, I don't know a single person who uses SMS for communication.

Exactly.

I also prefer not to have one of the most garbage companies apps on my phone (WhatsApp). The messages may be encrypted, but the location data and storage permissions you're giving it aren't.

i live in Ukraine and I don't know anyone who uses sms.
also Whatsapp is not prevalent here either, basically everyone is using Telegram (or in case of older population, viber, which is installed on like 90% of devices)

are there any countries in which sms is still used?

Yes, North America between Android and iPhone.

I use RCS with everyone except iPhone users, which defaults to SMS.

Lol, that was the worst feature ever. If you forgot disabling it at install, it was nearly impossible to see it's going to be a sms or signal message. (Especially for people who aren't tech savvy)

To dislike the feature is one thing, to not understand why ithers valued it is a whole pther ball game of ignorance

That is dumb that they'd remove a feature, but I tried it and switched back to a dedicated texting app. The feature wasn't full featured enough for me to want to use it.

Not being able to copy my SMS message history into Signal kept me from switching... Well, I might have anyway if googie didn't make it so their app only lets you see your message history if you make it the default

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