Signal downloads spike in the US and Yemen amid government scandal | TechCrunch
The encrypted messaging app Signal is getting some unexpected attention this week. High-ranking officials in the Trump administration, including Vice
People hoping to get randomly added to war chats lol
i'm more curious about getting on their venmo friend list.
"hey, it's uh, vlad. i need 200k for the um, rigging of the midterms in uh, wisconsin. thank you."
Just send like a request for a few thousand dollars and put the description entirely I'm Russian lol
I would ruin it by posting my balls immediately
Ironically having a giant security breach happen in a security focused messaging app was good advertising.
Of course in this instance the breach was not because of the app, which is a good thing I guess.
On Signal you can verify user identify, and you should absolutely do it if were to discuss national security maters.
This is not a hidden feature, I think it's designed to prevent man in the middle attack. It also work against the "oops I accidentally added a journalist to my conversation no one should know of", which is so dumb that no one saw this coming 😅
It's not a security breach per se. Someone accidentally added a journalist to the group. Signal is still as safe as it's ever been.
PEBKAC
Everyone hoping to get accidentally added to a government group chat.
Good. It's the only encrypted channel I trust right now.
I'd consider using them if I didn't need to use a phone number to register. My friends and family stick with Briar as a result.
Matrix is also an option and heavily audited+ federated. And unlike Signal not based in the US.
And the best? You can easily selfhost a bridge to signal and WhatsApp.
Bad actors are sowing distrust by implying that Signal is not secure. Always remember that the powers that be don't want the public to have encrypted comms and would love to ban private messaging apps altogether. I could also be completely wrong and Signal is in fact a fed honeypot...
The code is open-source though, and I'm hoping that individuals more learned than I would surely alert us if there were any backdoors/exploits...
There are many things you can complain about when it comes to signal, but overall it's a huge improvement from unencrypted messengers like discord and definitely a step leap in the right direction
You have to be very tinfoil hat to believe that this current administration is capable of anything so sophisticated as a misdirection.
Bad actors are sowing distrust by implying that Signal is not secure. Always remember that the powers that be don’t want the public to have encrypted comms and would love to ban private messaging apps altogether.
Wrong logic, trying to guess what they are doing. I mean, if you were a god-level poker player, then maybe, but most people are not and god-level players lose too.
and Signal is in fact a fed honeypot
Being competitive and protected from network effects (decentralized, p2p, federation, one standard and many implementations, all that) can hurt being secure. The complexity of being both may not be practical.
The point of Signal is academic level security. It has a clear model and is not doing anything to make it more complex.
Which is why it is centralized, leading to suspicions and accusations of being a honeypot.
The code is open-source though, and I’m hoping that individuals more learned than I would surely alert us if there were any backdoors/exploits…
That's a wrong hope in any case.
For the people who want to use Signal but are stuck in WhatsApp land because all their contacts are on WhatsApp, you should download WhatsApp business and create an automated away message that says that you are only available via Signal and with a link to your Signal account (if you use a Signal username. ) People in my contacts are slowly switching to Signal.
I did something similar with Twilio. When you call or text my number you get a message about how to reach me. The Twilio SDKs are pretty good. It's just a few lines of code.
Next up:
The chat space is problematic.
This contributes to a fragmentation that makes WhatsApp the app that-you-must-have
Sure it is supposedly encrypted but I would not bet my money that is without back doors
Whatsapp to messengers is what internet explorer was to browsers lol. Slow, bloated, unfree, universally hated, but still somehow universally used
Ain’t that the truth
I mean honestly, feature wise, it's pretty good in my opinion. It has some very useful features Signal lacks (e.g. live location sharing) and it's not slow or badly designed in my opinion.
I still prefer Signal since I don't like Facebook, but realistically speaking WhatsApp is pretty good.
So who exactly is downloading the app as a result of this latest government scandal? I'm going to guess it's the maga crowd because they are this as an endorsement from their new king. But hopefully I'm wrong and it's a broad sweep of different users from across the political spectrum.
Why should it matter if the new users are all magas or not?
You wouldn't want the Signal brand to become linked to it.
"I'm on Signal, would you like to chat there?"
"What, on the MAGA Nazi app, are you joking? Of course I'm not talking to you there!"
Ideally you want a broad spectrum of people.
I know it shouldn't make a difference and people should base their views strictly on the technical and usability aspects of the app, but real life doesn't work that way. Perceptions matter.
It matters though. Like in Germany telegram is associated with hard right wings groups. Telling someone you use telegram makes them assume that you are a part of hard right ideologies.
It’s a shame as the telegram app is really snappy. You always have to say that you are on telegram but are not right wing. Even then people can be suspicious.
It just about always comes down to user error. The White House trusting Signal is very indicative of the effectiveness of the app's underlying protocols and the organization's commitment to privacy. This is definitely huge publicity and I hope Signal endures the limelight.
LOL what kinda bullshit comment is this?
The people in the White House are idiots. They choose Signal because they're either dumb/negligent -or- because they have been intentionally avoiding record preservation requirements.
Signal is a solid app for sure, but these dipshits didn't choose it for being the right tool for the job here, as it certainly is not.
It's not the right tool for their job but still a good tool for the laws they were trying to break...
I wholeheartedly agree the White House is full of morons. I was just saying that Signal is a solid app for me to securely share bullshit with my family. Its definitely not the right tool for government officials to use. But its plenty safe for sharing memes and pics of my dog.
The white house trusting signal is nice, but using it to circumvent official communication tools which document messages for the archives is not the way it should be used - they used the "disappearing messages"-feature as well. This usage is more in line with criminal organizations like the mafia or yakuza.
Signal has been with me for a decade. Have had Matrix/Element installed for years but no one i know uses it
hmm havent heard of this one yet. Looks promising, gonna try it later. Thanks!
For people seeking an interface similar to signal, I suggest Session. It's a fork of signal that onion-routes the messages (they have their own onion routing network, not TOR). There are no user IDs stored anywhere, you message people through their public keys. From the user experience side of the coin, it's a little on the slow side tho.
But definitely find out beforehand whether there were any security gaps or anything else. I followed the whole thing at the beginning of the tox protocol and the clients were not yet fully developed. But since I couldn't get people away from WA, I forgot about it over time. So I can't say anything about the security.
I know session... well i have read about it.. Didnt test it because i would fail at the same point like with tox.
