Signal registration without a phone number now available in Android beta (but payment required!)
a month ago by hatingfedizen to c/privacy
Signal has started rolling out Signal Login, an optional registration method that allows users to create a Signal account without providing a phone number. The feature will be rolled out first on Android and will come to iOS later.
As we previously reported, Signal Login is not a free alternative registration method. Signal requires users who choose to register without a phone number to make a one-time payment. The price at launch is $2.99 / € 3.49, although this may vary by region and currency.
Signal knows the creation time of your account.
Google knows the timestamps of every transaction made through Play Services.
Law enforcement wants to deanonymize an account and subpoenas Signal for the creation time of the account, which Signal will provide them.
Law enforcement subpoenas Google for the records of all Play Services users who paid for Signal Login at that time, plus or minus a few minutes.
Law enforcement now has a shortlist of suspects. If Signal Login is paid for by 1 million users per year (unlikely) then that's one user every 30 seconds on average. A 5 minute window of time will be a list of 10 individuals, identified by their payment details and Google account.
I've looked at unsealed records provided by the Signal Foundation, and they definitely have the account creation and last accessed date... But besides that, is there really any information authorities can glean from this? Or is it simply the issue that this leaves users at square one, if they're trying to avoid connecting an identity (be it phone, or Google, which generally requires a phone) to it?
For me, I see this as a potential boon for simply having a second account without having to go through the rigmarole of maintaining an extra SIM card.
Ah lame. Hope they add more options, because relying on Google's platform sucks for a bunch of reasons.
I feel $3 is more than fair as a one-time payment for this option. Good on Signal for this option.
Except the payment goes through Google Play, making it trackable
Which is antithetical to having a "private messenger"
No, it's only antithetical to having a "anonymous messenger".
Still don't like it that Signal would require payment through Google and I'm hoping for more payment options (inb4 Apple...) but let's not call a hare a 'hore.
Do they have any guarantee about not logging payment details?
Edit: As another comment mentioned, Signal doesn't have access to the payment details, but Google does as Play Services is required for the transaction, making the situation still problematic.
Still depends on Google? Into the trash bin it goes.
Hopefully they can adopt FOSS payment methods soon. I've heard good things about Taler, but am still waiting for a good reason (in terms of commerce support) to use it.
You don't want to have to use a payment method at all... the problem with not having a phone number is there is no way to tie the account to someone who is responsible for the content, and Signal does not want the liability nor the spam traffic, of potentially harmful traffic (in whatever sense that may mean).
Or if you want the tinfoil hat response... they need/want to tie your account to a real identity for surveillance purposes, and they can't do that if there is no phone number, so they use a payment record instead. (I made all that up and have no idea if it's true)
Or if you want the tinfoil hat response... they need/want to tie your account to a real identity for surveillance purposes, and they can't do that if there is no phone number, so they use a payment record instead.
They're using zero-knowledge proofs for the payments so they can't link the account to the credit card used to pay it.
Zero-knowledge proofs as a concept sound sus to me. How do you prove that you don't know something? The fact of being tested already means you know of it. What's a good writeup n how Signal does it? And how can a user of Signal test or certify it?
they can’t link the account
Google can, since it's their OS and their payments.
But even if you're not using Play Store to pay, the vast majority of people who are paying are going to be using the same device/IP/fingerprint/etc. where Signal is running, so it's not impossible to put the two together to link an account to a specific payment, if say, a government forced them to do so in order to track someone. It's just a bad idea for several different privacy reasons.
Google can know you've paid but they can't link it to your Signal account thanks to zero-knowledge proofs.
Except for tracing IP addresses, timing etc... as you've mentioned, but that's much more involved and cannot be done retroactively.
Interesting how Deltachat and Jabber, both decentralized encrypted messaging apps (as opposed to Signal, which is centralized), don't even require an email to create an account, let alone a phone number or payment.
Both of those probably also have a small fraction of the users of Signal, at least at this moment.
Privacy-wise: DeltaChat is cool but it lacks forward secrecy for now and the foreseeable future, and XMPP is a newbie-excluding mess (for example, encrypted group chats require every user to authenticate every other user)
Both of those probably also have a small fraction of the users of Signal
Change has to start somewhere, just like Lemmy/Piefed has a fraction of the users of Reddit :)
DeltaChat is cool but it lacks forward secrecy for now and the foreseeable future
That may or may not be an issue depending on the threat model of the individual. Someone that suspects a state actor may be surveilling them? They'd likely want something more secure (though I personally wouldn't trust Signal in that scenario either due to their centralized nature, which makes them an easy target for state actors).
For someone just wanting a group chat with friends/family that they don't want being used for AI training or sold to ad companies to build a profile on them? Deltachat is more than secure enough, and certainly better than the corporate owned options they likely already use.
and XMPP is a newbie-excluding mess (for example, encrypted group chats require every user to authenticate every other user)
I haven't needed to authenticate anything manually in my experience in the XMPP apps I've used. I just enable OMEMO encryption in the chat I'm in, and as long as the other participants also have that option enabled, it usually just works, and they can read my messages. Its certainly worked better and more smoothly than Matrix's encrypted chats, which consistently had issues with messages not decrypting.
The main problem with XMPP (well for me anyway) is that the implementation of OMEMO that 99% of the apps use is woefully out of date, and Conversations (and their ilk) seem to actively resist updating because unless EVERYONE does it at the same time it will break interoperability.
The second problem for me is the ease of use, I'd have to physically set up accts for literally all my contacts on Jabber (everyone I know is stupid [it's really just learned helplessness and it pisses me off to no end]), but on Delta I can legit say "here, click link" and it'll bring up their app store on DC, then they DL and make an acct and then I say "click the link again" and they're directly connected to me, done. So much easier. And then next time I see them I can say "hey give me your phone I'm gonna do stuff to your Delta acct" and I can add relays and create a backup for them, but at least we can get started easier.
Besides, they are working on forward secrecy afaik, and they're one of the only teams making these apps that seems to acknowledge metadata's existence, honestly they seem like one of the best options all things considered. Sure if your threat model is the US gov then maybe not, but better not use Intel or AMD or any android (incl Graphene, and I'm a user myself) or iphone then. Carrier pigeons maybe.
The main problem with XMPP (well for me anyway) is that the implementation of OMEMO that 99% of the apps use is woefully out of date
The whole 'OMEMO is out of date' thing started with Soatok's blog, however what is less known is that blogger removed chose to block/not approve a response in the comments from an OMEMO developer who clarified some things (you can it read here), which personally I think was rather odd/bad faith of them to do.
According to that response, there's nothing really wrong with the older OMEMO 0.3.0, as the developer considers it a stable standard that clients can safely implement, while the newer versions are basically public beta releases that are working toward a stable 'OMEMO 2' standard that can eventually replace 0.3.0, and be stable enough for all XMPP apps to implement at once, hence why most apps are remaining on the older version.
I absolutely agree that Deltachat has by far a smoother onboarding process compared to XMPP, and I think for most people, Delta is probably the better option.
Where XMPP shines is if someone needs access to more discord-like features, which is where the the Movim XMPP client (a web app that works across all platforms, Desktop and Mobile) does well, as it was able to use XMPP to have Discord-like servers with text and group voice chat rooms, as well as screensharing. It works quite well for the most part. There is still definitely some UX oddities in Movim that can add some friction, but the dev is quite open to suggestions for improvements, and it's come a long way in recent months (the discord-like features for example were added just this year).
Change has to start somewhere
I'm trying, but nobody has messaged me yet (see my profile, I've had it there for a while!) On the bright side, I guess I've enjoyed a lack of spam or other nonsense through sheer obscurity.
For someone just wanting a group chat with friends/family that they don’t want being used for AI training or sold to ad companies to build a profile on them? Deltachat is more than secure enough, and certainly better than the corporate owned options they likely already use.
Maybe, although I would argue that if the server is a concern already (E2EE makes it one!) then forward secrecy would be necessary to prevent a single key from leaking the group chat in question. And toward secrecy is no longer a new technology thanks to Signal.
I'm hanging onto DeltaChat with the hope they implement it as soon as PGP does.
I haven’t needed to authenticate anything manually in my experience in the XMPP apps I’ve used. I just enable OMEMO encryption...
I'm unfamiliar with the current state of the ecosystem, but... That's kind of the problem with it too, right? There is no standard, and unlike even Lemmy, the mishmash leads to user-unfriendliness. Specifically I was thinking of this comment , which may not be relevant to your client:
Group chats do not have group key, but one encrypt messages for each group member (pairwise), which means that everybody has to do key exchange with everybody. This does not scale... which means that even if membership is stable, new keys may appear. Some clients (Conversations) do not allow to send message to a group when they do not know some keys of some group members/devices , which is fail situation that happen pretty often.
Regarding attracting users, somebody else noted
If you tell people "on Android you should use this app, on iOS use that app" - you lose regular people fast. If you have a feature that only exists in one app on one platform, you also really lose people.
I definitely don't want XMPP to fail, but it seems that after years, it's all too little too late. That one, I'm not holding my breath on. (DeltaChat, I am.)
I agree that XMPP has some UX problems that some clients have yet to solve, and that is one area where Deltachat is very much ahead.
If you tell people “on Android you should use this app, on iOS use that app” - you lose regular people fast. If you have a feature that only exists in one app on one platform, you also really lose people.
A good solution to this issue would be to exclusively recommend the Movim client.
Due to it being a web app, it's compatible across all platforms (any desktop or mobile device regardless of OS), and is the only client that has so far successfully implemented a slew of advanced features that Deltachat does not have, such as Discord-like channels with text and group voice chat rooms, as well as screensharing with audio (I think only on Chromium based browsers so far, as it's still quite a new feature).
It still has some UX issues it needs to work on that will cause some friction with normies compared to Deltachat (a big one is that notifications don't work reliably on mobile yet), but the dev is very open to suggestions of how to improve it, and is very active in developing it (the discord-like features were all implemented just a few months ago). I think it may give XMPP a fighting chance for the future.
Session seems pretty good for this! Not sure if forward secrecy is fully implemented yet but it's in the works. User interface seems really easy so far.
Not sure about the stability of the maintainers but the FOSS community has been actively supporting it.
Forward secrecy protects against intercepting now and decrypting later when you get access to the users private key: this is only possible on delta chat if you get access to the client database at which point you can read all undeleted messages anyway. (On Signal even deleted messages!)
Yes, just like it isn't the Signal Foundation that collects the connection metadata, but AWS on which Signal runs and Signal is collecting just enough metadata that it is possible to correlate the metadata AWS has with the account details that Signal has. Or Google and the notification metadata and device hardware identifies, etc. Or the metadata that Cloudflare collects when Signal uses them as a CDN...
So for many years, people wanted to use Signal without a phone, a geotracking device, by just registering on Desktop.
But it's impossible: it must be linked to a phone AND phone number.
After years and years of asking, people can now register with... a credit card?!?
This is a honeypot. Only a honeypot would behave this way and avoid things like Monero, desktop only registration, etc.
I am not sure how the honeypot works, but if it weren't a honeypot they would be behaving differently.
I recently read an interesting article from someone that helped with the initial design of Signal and who left in anger over Moxie Marlinspike refusing to even discuss the option to not require phone numbers. From the article it was very clear that this was apparently non-negotiable from the start...
The other interesting detail was that apparently there was enough money involved to fly developers from all over the US to Hawaii for a week long hackathon in a rented fancy villa for building the initial Signal prototype, coincidentally very close to the NSA facilities that Edward Snowden used to work in... and this was way before they got the large donations from the WhatsApp founder.
Of course this isn't proof of anything, but it has a certain smell to it.
Signal registration without a phone number now available in Android beta
Oh cool so it's more private now
(but payment required!)
Oh, so it's less private now, cool.
I already don't use it anymore so what do I care, back when they had SMS and Signal, people would download it "just for a protest" and delete it without disassociating their number, and then I'd go to message them but instead of defaulting to SMS because they deleted the app signal defaulted to "still has acct," but since they'd deleted the app the message gets delivered but only to like, the server I guess.
So now to text those 5 people I have to make Messenger my default, send an SMS, they don't respond immediately so I switch back to Signal as default, then they reply so I have to switch my default back to Messenger to reply, and so on. Sure, now that is probably fixed with them dropping SMS support, maybe, but I'm already using Delta Chat since it took them SIX FUCKING YEARS to solve that and I wasn't going to wait, so, sucks to suck I guess.
Just a heads up that the SimpleX founder, Evgeny Poberezkin, unfortunately has ties to right-wing groups.
Evgeny is a supporter of the far-right populist Reform UK party, and the Donald Trump administration. In 2024, he donated to the Reform UK party on behalf of SimpleX chat and boosted Tommy Robinson, a far-right, anti-Islam activist and convicted violent criminal, and his support of violent far-right riots in the UK.[
On X, Evgeny frequently boosts far-right politicians, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, climate change denial, and transphobic and otherwise bigoted rhetoric.
SimpleX has received a $1M donation from Jack Dorsey in the wake of changes to Telegram that promised to crack down on far-right extremism on the app.
Also @sonalder@lemmy.ml and @lonesomeCat@lemmy.ml
But is it more sustainable?
I love SimpleX I was really early on to test it and it improved over the years but running a messenger is heavy even if decentralized, especially when you have to do all the R&D because you work like nothing else.
If it's "free" with a phone number and costs money to use another method (which is another form of PII) then the only explanation I can see is that having your phone number is worth at least $3 more to Signal than having your credit card number. Or maybe the fact that children can have a phone number but not a credit card and having information on kids is worth more to them.
No no no.
The $3 is to incur a cost on would-be spammers. I don't think most Fedi users appreciate how much work goes into combatting spam at scale. Signal has hundreds of millions of users. Requiring a phone number limits the blast radius of successful spam campaigns. Removing that requirement means making it much easier for spammers to register.
Thats very cheap. Bit worried it wont be enough to prevent spam, guess time will tell.
i just wish folks would use threema
Another centralized silo is not the solution, and Threema was recently sold to a dodgy investment consortium that seems to have been purely set up to hide the true owners (and all the original founders of the company left).
good to know.
I've tried simplex a while ago. It felt the most private IM I could find. It's hard to get people to use it tho
Unfortunately, dishonest actors would take advantage of the fact that honest ones have provided the free infrastructure, and use it to spam. Signal can't link previous donations on a different account with a new one - and for privacy reasons, that's a good thing.
It sucks that this requires payment, but it's quite understandable.
😂 My point is signal is not going forward to be decentralized, they have history of suppressing forks. Also always reuqireing phone numbers and now when they don't, they require another piece of personally identifiable information. It has mass following, lots of money and status as a best and most secure app for chat. Techniacally it is good, but the other stuff looks like they just don't wanna go decentralized way, make app more indestructible(what guarantees one day US won't just shut the door).
Sorry english is not my first language and i am dispointed in tech and pessimistic about it
@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
Rules
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
- Be civil and no prejudice
- Don't promote big-tech software
- No apathy and defeatism for privacy (i.e. "They already have my data, why bother?")
- No reposting of news that was already posted
- No crypto, blockchain, NFTs
- No Xitter links (if absolutely necessary, use xcancel)
Related communities:
Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.
go to feed...
@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
Rules
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
- Be civil and no prejudice
- Don't promote big-tech software
- No apathy and defeatism for privacy (i.e. "They already have my data, why bother?")
- No reposting of news that was already posted
- No crypto, blockchain, NFTs
- No Xitter links (if absolutely necessary, use xcancel)
Related communities:
Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.
go to feed...
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