[HN Gopher] Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon) ___________________________________________________________________ Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon) Author : Aissen Score : 452 points Date : 2022-10-12 16:08 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (signal.org) (TXT) w3m dump (signal.org) | inktype wrote: | bragr wrote: | Personally I never used Signal to send SMS and the possibility to | fat finger the mode and send SMS instead was always a downside to | me. | Melatonic wrote: | same | endorphine wrote: | Same here. I would not like for SMS to be mixed with my secure | messages. I see this as a feature. | Haemm0r wrote: | The feature is the reason why it is easy to convert older people | to use signal: You can keep your SMS workflow and have only one | messaging app... | CraftThatBlock wrote: | This was one of the core features of using Signal for me. I wish | they had implemented RCS and more features for SMS instead of | removing it. I'm very disappointed with this feature. | | As a side note, I'm on the beta, and recently got "Signal | Stories". This immensely annoyed me, and had to dig through to | remove it (since it wasn't obvious). After the whole crypto thing | and these decisions, it might be time to find another secure | messaging app. | gophin wrote: | Are there any Android apps that support RCS other than Google | Messages? | | I'm not sure exactly what is exposed in the framework API | regarding RCS, and how it compares to the relative ease of | receiving SMS and MMS messages. | [deleted] | pitaj wrote: | They can't implement RCS, because there's no Android API for | it. | soulofmischief wrote: | > We have now reached the point where SMS support no longer makes | sense. | | What a laughable, out of touch suggestion. Did anyone at Signal | actually ask the community what they thought about removing SMS | support? | | Seriously, this decision is going to kill Signal app. It will | halt the majority of growth as evangelists such as myself can no | longer recommend it with a straight face. Signal is supposed to | enhance the messaging experience, not replace it. | | I think Signal thinks they can take on the WhatsApp market, | completely misunderstanding why that market didn't choose Signal | in the first place. The products serve two completely different | user needs, and are highly geographically segregated. | | What the heck is going on over at Signal Foundation? | Dma54rhs wrote: | Maybe their target market us not US that hasn't moved away from | sms. I don't know the numbers but this could be an argument for | themselves. | mfuzzey wrote: | Do people still use SMS? | | I haven't for many years, for sending (except for one time I | wanted to test a modem driver SMS function). | | I regularly use Signal, Telegram and Google chat and used to use | whatsapp until it was banned by my employer but the only time I | ever use SMS is to receive automatic authorisation SMSs | toastedwedge wrote: | My workplace uses SMS. There are also many people in the US who | do not carry smartphones, either. So at least here it is still | very much in use. | PenguinCoder wrote: | > supports plain SMS/MMS to function as a unified messenger | | So this is now a lie. This decision absolutely goes against how | users actually use the software. Tone deaf and insulting. More | cases of Signal saying "we know better than you. You're using it | wrong. Do what we say. | mdaniel wrote: | It was a lie before, too, as their MMS support is a raging | dumpster fire and when their code pukes, it just silently eats | the error message, leaving one to wonder why the message wasn't | sent (or received!) | | This announcement totally squares with my experience trying | multiple times to fix their MMS implementation. It was at that | point that I stopped using Signal for SMS, since I knew it | wasn't important to them | codethief wrote: | Many people have commented on why this is devastating news | regarding future adoption of Signal. But there is a second part | to the announcement that hasn't received a lot of attention yet: | | > If you want to keep them, you'll also need to export your SMS | messages from Signal into that new app. | | So that means my text messages will be removed from my Signal | chat history? Put differently, considering how many of my | contacts over the years switched between using Signal, not using | Signal, and using Signal again, this means that parts of my | conversations will suddenly be gone and conversations might | suddenly be incoherent? | | I have trouble expressing just _how_ angry I am about this | change. | xingped wrote: | It's already bad enough that I would never be able to convince | family today to switch to Signal due to the removal of SMS | history importing and now you want to remove the ability to | send/receive SMS via Signal too? Good job guaranteeing you just | cratered any additional growth of your userbase. | | I've always wondered how companies become so blind to what their | userbase actually wants and needs (looking at the majority of the | rest of the comments here that seem to echo my sentiment as well) | that we end up in situations like this. I guess "you die a hero | or live long enough to become the villain" applies to apps too. | chrisfosterelli wrote: | One bright side of this is that Android's (Google's) Messages app | has been pushing hard on RCS (the intended successor to SMS) and | by default now does auto-upgrade to end-to-end encryption with | any other messages users. If you're using signal, you don't get | that auto-upgrade, so for conversations with anyone using a | "default" google phone setup you were actually getting less net | security on your comms compared to using the default SMS app. | | I noticed this when I got a new phone and hadn't yet enabled | signal to handle SMS and opted to stay with it because of how | many conversations I had that were auto-E2E, where before they'd | just been text messages. I still prefer signal for the people I | know use it though. In short you can still use the signal | (protocol at least) on messages, so I can understand why signal | would do this. | NoGravitas wrote: | Does AOSP Messaging do RCS? I am assuming not. | h4waii wrote: | No, AOSP Messages does not support RCS. | | It seems Google is going to let it die to move people to | Google Messages. | seneca wrote: | Given that it's Google, are you sure they do true end to end | encryption. I would be shocked if they don't have access to the | contents of your messages. | londons_explore wrote: | They do the same as Whatsapp. Ie. it is proper end to end | encryption. Encryption keys can be verified manually. But | there is no way to know the app doesn't secretly send the key | to the server (although a disassembly of the app could catch | them red handed if this were the case). | | The big loophole is: | | * The messages can be forced to be sent unencrypted if one or | other end of the connection doesn't have data connectivity. | | * The conversation backups are cleartext, so if either you or | the other party has backups enabled, the e2e encryption is | kinda pointless. | andwaal wrote: | If anyone want a privacy focused all in one app I cannot | recommend Beeper enough. I have been using it as my main app for | SMS, messenger, WhatsApp and LinkedIn for half a year now and | have only positiv experiences. Some bugs still, but amazing | support and continuous fixes. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278 | anigbrowl wrote: | This decision is asinine and should be reversed. | | I have been using Signal for years. The ability to make it your | default SMS client is one of the major drivers of adoption; if | someone agrees that privacy matters, and you can point out that | the transition to Signal is frictionless and offers all the same | features as their existing SMS app, then installing, trying, and | liking it become easy. I've brought hundreds of people onto | Signal, and being able to give a simple 'yes' to questions about | whether it handles SMS is almost always what 'seals the deal.' | | Signal is saying that mixing non-secure and secure messages in | the same app might cause confusion and security fails, even | though the difference is very clearly signalled. | | Their argument is bullshit. If users go back to separate | messaging apps, chances are those apps will look much the same as | Signal (which itself copies the look and feel of the iOS | messaging app quite closely). There's a much bigger security risk | from users forgetting that they are not in Signal and carelessly | pasting & sending information that was supposed to be private or | disappear. | | Additionally, it creates a bunch of new security risks, allowing | third parties who gain possession of a phone to distinguish | between conversations that happen over SMS and conversations that | happen over Signal, drawing inferences that there is something | untoward about the latter. | | I cannot understand the constantly changing, er, signals coming | from Signal. One month they want to be just like every other | messaging app and they're pushing features that hardly anyone has | asked for, like sticker packs or crypto payments. Other times | they say users are too paranoid for not wanting to expose their | phone number/pop up messages about who in the user's address book | has installed Signal. Today they're saying that wanting to use | Signal for all your messaging needs is somehow anti-privacy. | | I find myself wishing it cost money or a small annual | subscription so I could vote with my $, because the Signal | foundation seems to spend more effort on telling its users that | they're wrong than on listening to them. | velosol wrote: | The blog post is... lacking but they have some half-decent | technical reasons at [1] if you're interested. | | [1]: https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing- | sms... | rvz wrote: | Great for security on Android. | | > The most important reason for us to remove SMS support from | Android is that plaintext SMS messages are inherently insecure. | They leak sensitive metadata and place your data in the hands of | telecommunications companies. With privacy and security at the | heart of what we do, letting a deeply insecure messaging protocol | have a place in the Signal interface is inconsistent with our | values and with what people expect when they open Signal. | | They do have a point though. SMS is insecure, unencrypted and | leaks highly sensitive metadata anyway and it needed to go from | Signal. You already have the system SMS app for this to use. | _emacsomancer_ wrote: | The Molly[1] fork of Signal already removed SMS support. | | [1]: https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android | S0und wrote: | Why do I have the feeling that every person who complains about | this as something of a deal breaker are from the US? This is so | weird, the rest of the world moved on SMS 10-15 years ago. | Flimm wrote: | But aren't iPhones popular in the US? Signal on iOS never | supported SMS to begin with. | nilespotter wrote: | To what? Facebook owned WhatsApp? | throw10920 wrote: | > The most important reason for us to remove SMS support from | Android is that plaintext SMS messages are inherently insecure. | | This is an _incredibly_ bad reason to remove SMS support. Sure, | the fact "plaintext SMS messages are inherently insecure" is | true, but the implication is _not_ "remove SMS support". | | Most people are motivated strongly by convenience. Signal is | convenient because of its use as a drop-in replacement for your | existing SMS client, so people use it, which increases their | personal privacy and security. Removing SMS support will | _directly and substantially_ reduce Signal usage, and therefore | both of those things. | | The solution to "SMS is insecure" is pretty obviously "make a | warning message telling users that", _which also solves their | second problem_ : | | > This brings us to our second reason: we've heard repeatedly | from people who've been hit with high messaging fees after | assuming that the SMS messages they were sending were Signal | messages, only to find out that they were using SMS, and being | charged by their telecom provider. | | ...and the third problem: | | > Third, there are serious UX and design implications to inviting | SMS messages to live beside Signal messages in the Signal | interface. | | This is _ridiculous_. You 're not making a paid product where if | your app doesn't look perfect people won't use it - you're making | a messaging app, and slightly ugly workarounds are perfectly OK. | | > It's important that people don't mistake SMS messages sent or | received via the Signal interface as secure and private when in | fact they are not. | | THEN DESIGN THE APP THAT WAY. IT'S NOT THAT HARD. | | This post is a travesty, and the reasoning contained inside is | _completely insane_. | | Wikipedia says that Moxie is still on the Signal Board of | Directors, but I find it hard to believe that he would let | something this crazy go through. | justinpombrio wrote: | They already tried putting a small light grey "unlocked" icon | on messages. If that doesn't scream "SMS", nothing does. All | available options exhausted. Time to throw in the towel. | codethief wrote: | > Wikipedia says that Moxie is still on the Signal Board of | Directors, but I find it hard to believe that he would let | something this crazy go through. | | IIRC I read (some years ago) that Moxie wasn't really convinced | that SMS support should stay in Signal-Android, either. | velosol wrote: | He was definitely against the encryption-over-SMS feature of | TextSecure as Android and smartphones more broadly grew in | marketshare. He also wrote the blog post on how it doesn't | matter if you have multiple messaging apps (or federation | between them) because the notification area of your phone is | the modern federation engine. I may be paraphrasing a bit | heavily but the post is at [1]. | | I agree I can see him being at least OK with removing SMS but | it seems at odds with what I felt was his overall view of | "get the most people the most security we can" and by | extension increasing the number of people using secure | messaging services to normalize it so simply using encryption | isn't seen as an outlier. The latter part is closer to moot | now more than ever before with WhatsApp being E2E by default | and Apple having huge marketshare in some markets with | iMessage. | | [1]: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ | miduil wrote: | > We have now reached the point where SMS support no longer makes | sense | | That is hard to swallow, being able to quickly send a message | through SMS to the same receiver in emergency situations* was | quite handy. | | *like when you're at a protest and the tower is overloaded, or | you're on a remote location and you see that the Signal message | doesn't get through because of lack of 3G/LTE connectivity. | thesis wrote: | Just a guess, but this likely has something to do with 10DLC | and/or Toll Free Verification and all of the complexities that | are being pushed by the carriers for users to register their | numbers and even pay to use if you want to use 10DLC. | Nextgrid wrote: | I believe "SMS support" just means Signal can act as your SMS | client using your existing modem & SIM card (something | possible on Android), so from the carrier and phone network | perspective there is no difference between this and using the | stock SMS app. | pluc wrote: | The integration is Abysmal with a capital A. | | If I get a SMS in Signal and I reply with Signal, it sends a | Signal message - not a SMS. | ravenstine wrote: | Cue the "actually we didn't mean that" follow-up to this. | teuobk wrote: | Thing is, now they've shown a willingness to make this change, | so from here on out people will be worried about them trying it | again at some point. | | The only way they have a hope of putting this genie back in the | bottle is to provide a loud, strong, clear mea culpa, stating | that they were categorically wrong to propose dropping SMS | support, plus a strong promise that they will continue | supporting SMS for the life of the product. Maybe something | along the lines of, "if we ever propose dropping SMS | integration again, you can consider that a warrant-canary type | of alert". | johnchristopher wrote: | > "if we ever propose dropping SMS integration again, you can | consider that a warrant-canary type of alert". | | Dropping an insecure messaging system is far from being a | warrant-canary type of alert, though. | betwixthewires wrote: | I use a default SMS application for SMS anyway, it changes | nothing for me. | | Now, if signal could get rid of the phone number requirement... | lettergram wrote: | First, I detest this. As an iOS user it's annoying to have | another messaging app and I'm sure many android users will stop | using signal. One day I converted my whole extended family to | signal by just installing signal on their android phones. Done, | no change for them in their user flow. | | That said, I also want to use signal without my phone. Things | like usernames would be great. | | That said, part of me thinks that's an engineering problem, not a | UX problem. Why are engineering problems being pushed into the UX | requirements? | plsbenice34 wrote: | Terrible, made my stomach sink. I got non-technical people to use | Signal. They were happy for years but now they are going to be | very upset by this and the problems will flow down to me. | tasubotadas wrote: | Who even use sms these days? | aidenn0 wrote: | My teenage daughters exclusively use iMessage which uses SMS | for anyone without an iPhone. | yamtaddle wrote: | In the US? Old people (so, probably some members of your | family), spammers, and ~100% of businesses that communicate via | any kind of IM service instead of or in addition to phone and | email. | dodgerdan wrote: | SMS and security are simply incompatible. And either you fall | into one of two groups 1. You know sms is insecure and this is a | insecure method of communication 2. You think sms sent via signal | is secure because it's a "secure messenger". It's clear that HN | users will fall into group 1, but the vast majority of people | would fall into group 2. So for me this is an overall security | win. | lucideer wrote: | Most of those in group 2 are not using Signal. | | Beyond that, the minority in group 2 that use Signal are most | likely to be using default settings. SMS handling is a non- | default option. So you're left with a very tiny minority. | | Group 1 makes up the vast vast majority of the userbase (and | most likely 100% of the evangelising userbase) | | (Also: if things are unclear for non-technical users, that's a | UX challenge, not an absolute) | monetus wrote: | The network effect of signal not being a hub for SMS and e2ee | will mean less people using e2ee, IMO. | NoGravitas wrote: | Yeah, I think this is more likely to be the case. People who | don't understand encryption but used Signal as their SMS | messenger were at least getting opportunistic encryption with | any of their contacts who were using Signal. Now they'll | probably just uninstall it (like every iOS Signal user I've | ever known). | dodgerdan wrote: | A few years ago I would have agreed, but right now Signal is | doing just fine taking users from WhatsApp (FB TOS changes + | ads + social group analysis)and Telegram (sketchy non-e2ee, | Russian owned, based in the middle east). | monetus wrote: | Weird, I am in the southeast U.S. and telegram is eating | signal's lunch in the social networks here. | dodgerdan wrote: | It's a big pie, they're also fairly different. And to be | honest it's only a matter of time before Telegram has a | (public) security incident that drives much more people | to E2EE messaging. | monetus wrote: | I'm curious how long it will be before that public | incident - they rolled their own cryptography right? With | that, I would imagine that if it hasn't been pwned yet, | then there would be a disproportionate amount of people | trying to break it. | stirfish wrote: | What people are concerned enough about a Terms of Service | change to leave Whatsapp, but struggle with the unlocked | icon next to "Insecure SMS" in Signal? | | What people know that Telegram isn't end-to-end encrypted, | but think SMS is? | arise wrote: | Signal has clear UI cues and redundant messaging telling you | what actions are insecure. | dodgerdan wrote: | Google did a security research around ssl and a crazy | percentage of people think the lock icon is actually a | handbag icon. The rest of the research highlighted how most | users aren't able to make informed choices, most people lack | the technical basis to make those choices. | Xelynega wrote: | So what's the overlap of "people who care enough about e2ee | for it to matter whether a message they're sending is | encrypted or not" and "people who think the lock icon next | to the send button in the encrypted messenging app they | downloaded is a handbag" | | I'm willing to wager it's not as big as you're trying to | imply. | KerryJones wrote: | ... and there's the reason I will likely stop using Signal? | | Signal was always one of those "win-win" apps, get more security | when it's available and I don't have to worry about adding to the | giant bucket of messaging apps. | | They were a paragon of putting the user first and I was a strong | supporter... but now... Why not Telegram? Or anything else? | | I don't _need_ the security, it was nice-to-have. Having to | switch between Signal and other apps is a heavy amount of | friction. | kelvie wrote: | "why not anything else" is mostly (for me) because they are a | non-profit, and unlikely to be bought by or turn into a | megacorp, similar to how wikipedia runs, although they're | certainly a mega-something at this point, it still feels a lot | less evil than a facebook or a google. | jacooper wrote: | Correction, you dont need the privacy* | | Telegram is absolutely the worst when it comes to privacy, it | has access to everything you do and say. | | If you want a master app, have a lot at matrix.org with | bridges. | zaik wrote: | Bridges break end to end encryption. | jacooper wrote: | Correct. But in the case of matrix you can host them in | your home if you want, or maybe on your phone(they are | still checking if this is possible or not) | zaik wrote: | Maybe I am capable to do so (although I already host an | XMPP server, so Matrix is rather redudant) but expecting | everyone to self-host is obviously not realistic. | | Currently Matrix is operating in a way that larger | instances aggregate private messages from bridges in | plain text. Those messages would have stayed encrypted | and secure if people didn't use Matrix. | NayamAmarshe wrote: | > Telegram is absolutely the worst when it comes to privacy | | Really? Telegram never said that they don't store your | messages on cloud, they said that they do not sell your data | or share it with third parties for profit. | | Telegram has received a very good score on PrivacySpy | (https://privacyspy.org), in fact better than any other | messaging app. Telegram is good from a regular privacy | perspective unless your threat model involves fearing cloud | convenience. | | Even FBI's leaked documents confirmed that Telegram does not | ever share user data easily. | [Source](https://www.securitynewspaper.com/2021/11/30/leaked- | fbi-docu...) | | If you're someone who requires spy-level opsec, you should be | using Threema, Session or Speek. Maybe even a self-hosted | XMPP instance. | | Telegram is good at what it does and it states it very | clearly. It does not lie about the things it does and it is | open source. All while not selling user data, not | manipulating user behavior through algorithms or censoring | media by calculating hashes and providing what's arguably the | most feature rich messaging app on the planet for free with a | verifiable source code. | | Also, be careful with what you're suggesting. Not only have | Matrix servers been hacked twice but matrix also leaks | metadata. If you're seriously suggesting true anonymity (not | consenting privacy) then Matrix is not a good option. | kitkat_new wrote: | > Really? | | Yes, really. You don't even argue against it. | | > pp. Telegram is good from a regular privacy perspective | unless your threat model involves fearing cloud | convenience. | | Telegram stores almost everything online without E2EE. | | > Not only have Matrix servers been hacked twice but matrix | also leaks metadata. | | Even Signal leaks meta data. | | > If you're seriously suggesting true anonymity (not | consenting privacy) then Matrix is not a good option. | | Out of Matrix, Telegram and Signal, Matrix is the best | option. It is the only one not making you share your phone | number giving you anonymity up to your IP address. | NayamAmarshe wrote: | > Yes, really. You don't even argue against | | and yet I just did. Can we please stop confusing privacy | and anonymity? | | Your claims about Telegram being bad for privacy are | baseless. Your concerns about messages is valid but it in | no way compromises privacy because: | | 1. No telegram employee can read any messages. They use | distributed key generation to encrypt data on servers | which means no single server has access to decryption | keys and all the servers are in different jurisdictions. | | 2. They do not sell message content data. If you can | prove it, you can go ahead with a lawsuit and win a hefty | sum. | | 3. They do not compromise security. They do not use E2EE | by default. Their threat model and vision for a messaging | platform is different than yours. | | 4. Telegram has never given message content for a court | order. As mentioned in the privacy policy, they give out | only the phone number and IP Address only in case of | terrorism or child abuse and only when there's a court | order from a country of a higher democratic index. | | 5. If you truly believe Telegram is bad for privacy even | after all the evidence from FBI itself and PrivacySpy | giving it a higher score than Signal, then please go | ahead and sue them because surely they can't have a good | privacy policy and bad privacy at the same time. | jhasse wrote: | That's false: Telegram doesn't have access to secret chats. | jacooper wrote: | Which no body uses and are extremely limited on purpose. | barbazoo wrote: | Don't they store the decryption keys? | orangepurple wrote: | Server does not store the keys for secret chats | barbazoo wrote: | I see, that's the 1 on 1 chats that are explicitly | configured as secret. So by default for 1 on 1 chats and | for all group chats the keys are stored on the server. | ComodoHacker wrote: | It's end-to-end, clients store the keys. | kitkat_new wrote: | it's not false | | In reality almost no one bothers with secret chats (no | syncing between devices, no backup and no group chat | possible). Instead everything is stored online without E2E | encryption, i.e. perfectly readable for the service | provider. | nilespotter wrote: | > ... and there's the reason I will likely stop using Signal? | | > Signal was always one of those "win-win" apps, get more | security when it's available and I don't have to worry about | adding to the giant bucket of messaging apps. | | Same here. I see no reason to continue using Signal if they do | this. | Thorentis wrote: | Which E2E encrypted app that matches Signals security will | you be switching to instead? | Snitch-Thursday wrote: | I agree. I picked signal over deltachat to replace group MMS | threads because it was less startup friction than getting | everyone to login to their email accounts on a mobile account | since they got SMSes for free. | | Now? Delta chat is looking plenty fine for doing private group | chats. | | My threat model is not nation states watching my metadata, I | have horrible opsec for that. My threat model is discord and | whatsapp etc. tossing me and my chat groups off a cliff at | their sole discretion. | | Signal gave me control over chat groups, and integrated with | SMS as a bonus. Now? If I'm gonna have to deal with a separate | SMS app anyways, I might as well use delta chat where I know my | messages are automatically backed up in my email account. | h4waii wrote: | It was obvious this was going to happen when they refused to | implement RCS. | | So instead of working on RCS, we got mobilecoin, stickers, gif | search, and now yank out legacy SMS support so more "features" | can be developed? | | As an early adopter of TextSecure, through CyanogenMod | integration, to Signal and everything in between, I have the | t-shirts and all -- I am done with Signal. | greysonp wrote: | There is no public RCS API on Android. Only OEMs can create RCS | clients. | aidenn0 wrote: | They didn't refuse to implement RCS; Android _doesn 't provide | APIs for RCS_. | DavidVoid wrote: | Well that's probably going to suck for everyone who convinced | their non-technical parents to switch to Signal. | | _" My bad, this easy SMS client I got you to switch to is going | to stop supporting SMS, and we're going to have to export all | your old texts or they'll be gone forever."_ | mcamaj wrote: | I started using Signal in 2013, I am afraid that I will be forced | to stop using it in 2023. Please change your direction!!! No one | wants to use yet another messaging app. Just adding my voice in | case some at Signal is reading these. | ea550ff70a wrote: | This sucks. I get the decision from a development pov but from a | user pov it's awful. Having 2 apps for texting is not great and | ultimately only creates friction. | mitchellpkt wrote: | This seems to be a "bug or feature" situation where the answer | depends on the user profile. The ability for messages to leave | the Signal app in plaintext SMS is a "feature" for users whose | top needs include a single-app UX, and a "bug" for users whose | top needs include an app that is foolproof E2EE (so users don't | have to consciously pay attention to which conversations are | Signal-native vs SMS). Maybe SMS support could be an opt-in | feature, to accommodate both groups? | | From my perspective (and I am NOT speaking for anybody else) this | is an improvement. I already have multiple messaging apps | installed, and when I click send on a Signal message I expect it | to go end-to-end encrypted or not go at all. But I am not the | only user profile. | brenns10 wrote: | I agree with your perspective - for me Signal is yet another | (more secure) internet messaging app on my phone, and I'm happy | that way. I wouldn't want it to have anything to do with SMS, | no more than I want FB messenger to start handling my SMS | (which it does offer at installation time). Plus, having used | Signal since the TextSecure days, I saw the SMS feature the | same way the announcement seems to characterize it: as old tech | debt waiting to get dropped. After all, I don't think Signal | for iOS ever had SMS ability. | | And to your main point, I hadn't even considered before seeing | this comment thread that anybody felt differently, let alone so | strongly. Really illustrates how differently people think about | the same app. | tomcam wrote: | None of the naysayers has addressed your point (and those of | TFA) rationally, as you have. | Xelynega wrote: | UX elements already exist to tell the user whether they're | encrypted or not, removing the ability to send unencrypted | shrinks their userbase while ensuring the apps adoption | plummets. | | There, points addressed. Can we move on? | tomcam wrote: | No, and thank you for asking. No one addressed what to me | is the main point, which is that Signal is handling | complaints from people who were being charged for SMS and | didn't know that would happen. People these days are often | not at all civil when dealing with support issues like | this, and for that reason alone I could imagine I'd drop | SMS. | chungy wrote: | > Maybe SMS support could be an opt-in feature, to accommodate | both groups? | | It already is opt-in. | leni536 wrote: | Never used signal, so I don't know it's UI language. Couldn't | they just put a red unlocked padlock symbol next to the send | button, if the sent message is going to be over an insecure | channel (SMS in this case)? Maybe they already had something | like this, so sorry for my ignorance. | monetus wrote: | The SMS symbol was a dull grey circle with a paper plane and | an open lock, while the encrypted message was a big blue | circle with a lock in the center. You had to choose | purposefully with a long press on that button to use SMS if | that is what you wanted, and the recipient was using signal. | [deleted] | Mystery-Machine wrote: | Terrible decision. They have a nice blue branding. What they | could've done instead is to show SMS messages as green bubbles | and then we'd have: green bubbles / blue bubbles, just like with | iMessage, except this time it works both on iOS _and_ Android. | This might win them over more and more users. | | If they manage to make the UI and feature set as complete as | iMessage, it would convince people to switch to Signal much much | faster than Google's pity RCS bashing of Apple. | captainmuon wrote: | I get their reasoning that SMS is insecure and you don't want to | accidentially send an SMS. I use Signal mostly for "confidential" | things, but every now and then for the occasional person who | contacts me there. So Signal is my "secure" app, Whatsapp my | "family" app, and so on. It's really weird if a family member | shows up in my secure activism chat app. | | It would make more sense if there was one codebase that supported | all apps. And then I could make a "silo" for each use case. I | would make one icon for activism, one for work, one for friends. | The first one must use E2EE, the second one must use my company's | Rocketchat, etc.. | | It's a pity Signal doesn't allow third party clients. I really | hope somebody makes a rouge multi protocoll app, like Pidgin used | to be. I bet a dedicated small team could make it in a year. | h4waii wrote: | Beeper is working on it. We'll see how it turns out. | | Matrix Bridges might also be a good option. | callahad wrote: | Those are kind of the same thing, though (Beeper is all | Matrix + open source bridges under the hood) | tannhaeuser wrote: | > _The most important reason for us to remove SMS support from | Android is that plaintext SMS messages are inherently insecure. | They leak sensitive metadata and place your data in the hands of | telecommunications companies._ | | Ok I get that on Android the situation is such that, as a message | provider, you don't give away "metadata" ie who is texting whom, | keeping that data either for yourself or the highest bidder. | WhatsApp, too, fuss about e2e encryption while conveniently not | talking about the value of "metadata" for ad targeting and even | want to aggressively grab and upload your contacts at every turn | (despite it being illegal in EU to share PII without explicit and | documented and revocable consent of all individual phone number | holders stored in your phone book). But why does this change come | only on Android? Would it be suicidal for signal to drop SMS/MMS | when the default messaging app (iMessage) _does_ fall back to SMS | /MMS on iOS as is well known? | prettyStandard wrote: | I am disappointed in this. I was hoping to onboard more people | onto signal, and this is a barrier to that. | seneca wrote: | This is going to seriously harm their user base. I've used signal | for years, but will have to drop it with change. People aren't | interested in maintaining several different messaging apps. | dodgerdan wrote: | I'll bet that user's sending plaintext sms's thinking they were | secure end to end encrypted messages did much more harm. | wakeupcall wrote: | Combining signal and sms to have a single messaging app is a big | reason as of why I keep using it. | | But like many recent developments, I'm just left dumbfounded by | their high-level decision making. I've stopped recommending | signal to tech persons for a while. I don't want yet another | messaging app either. Matrix is serving me well. | errantmind wrote: | I know it is harsh to say, but whoever approved this should | probably be sacked. This is really obviously a poor decision with | respect to preserving/growing the userbase and will actually | decrease privacy overall when fewer people are using Signal. | akudlacek wrote: | I cast my vote by dropping my measly $3 a month donation. | neogodless wrote: | Cannot tell if it was previously linked here, but this seems of | interest. | | https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms... | | No doubt they are in a tough spot. Some users will not accept | this feature omission. But if what they claim is accurate, the | insecure nature of SMS, along with Google's hoarding of their | internal RCS APIs makes it tough to be a messaging provider on | Android. | faeriechangling wrote: | What an awful move. Make a different app if you want to remove | SMS access. | robotbikes wrote: | This is a frustrating change being proposed and I don't like how | powerless I feel to stop it. I even started donating to Signal | because I support what they have done but it will dramatically | limit the usability of the app. Many people sign up for Signal | and then never check it and so it was convenient to be able to | send a insecure SMS message to them instead. | | The only possible benefit to this would be to break their | dependence on using phone numbers as the way to sign up for | accounts and possibly provide a reasonable way to export message | data. | | Otherwise it just feels like the wrong decision and a reminder | that Signal is not a community driven project but subject to | arbitrary changes and provides no way to fork or disagree with | the project lead as can be done with most free and open source | software. | dheera wrote: | I support this decision, I don't use SMS and I'm in support of | everything that kills SMS. | | Next step: Please stop using phone numbers as a user ID. I have | lots of throwaway phone numbers, but many people don't want to | leak their phone number to every single person they want to have | an encrypted conversation with. | garciansmith wrote: | Yeah, I'll just tell the gas company, electric company, | internet provider, my bank, my elderly neighbor who can barely | use a phone and I taught how to text, every restaurant I order | online from, the plumber I just texted literally an hour ago | due to a pipe leaking to just... not use SMS. I'm sure they'll | listen. | | I assume you live in a place where SMS isn't necessary? In the | U.S. it is. | bobmaxup wrote: | I think the parent was stating that it doesn't have to be | that way, and that things could be better without SMS and | 10DLC. | dheera wrote: | > gas company, electric company, | | Mine don't need SMS | | > internet provider, | | Also doesn't need SMS for me | | > my bank, | | F them, I use a throwaway Twilio number for this | | > my elderly neighbor who can barely use a phone and I taught | how to text, | | I tell them to either e-mail me or stick a handwritten note | on my door. E-mail is WAY easier to use for elderly people in | my experience. You get nice big keyboards, big fonts, big | screens, and it works on any device you own, not just one. | But if they disagree they can still handwrite a note to me | | > every restaurant I order online from, | | I use a fake number for these. They don't need my number any | more than I need their wait staff's phone numbers. Never been | a problem. I just go pick up and say my name, no SMS | bullshit. | | > the plumber I just texted literally an hour ago | | I don't text plumbers, I e-mail or call them | garciansmith wrote: | > gas company, electric company, Especially when there are | issues that's how mine send updates. To say nothing about | companies that require 2FA through text! | | > bank I can't use VOIP numbers with them, not sure about | Twilio. | | > my elderly neighbor who can barely use a phone and I | taught how to text You make the assumption that they even | have a computer: they do not. They do normally just knock | on my door, but they want to send and receive pictures to | their family and other people who do not live close by. | | > every restaurant I order online from I want to know when | my order is ready. | | > the plumber I just texted literally an hour ago He asked | for a picture of the leak and to text it to him. He's | reliable and has done good work before, I'm not going to | switch just because he doesn't use email. | | My point in all of this is that in the U.S. SMS is | ubiquitous. As much as I would love to leave it behind, | there are just so many situations where you need SMS. | dheera wrote: | > where you need SMS | | Honestly not really, in the US. You can usually find ways | around it if you tell the business that you don't have | SMS. With governments I don't think they can legally | require you to have SMS. | | When they find out it's incredibly difficult to deal with | you because of the design choices _they_ made, it helps | dethrone SMS, one business at a time. Vote with your | behavior. Make them realize they made a bad choice by | picking SMS. | Tajnymag wrote: | > I support this decision, I don't use SMS | | I lost you there | ewired wrote: | I hate SMS too, but I think this decision will hurt Signal | infinitely more than it will hurt SMS. By that I mean it will | not affect SMS at all and only Signal. | roer wrote: | I feel like this change will increase the amount of SMS users | if anything | dheera wrote: | Why? | | I tell everyone I don't use SMS. The only ways to message me | are e-mail, Signal, WeChat, FB, and Instagram. | | E-mail is the best "generic" way to reach me that isn't tied | to a company's platform, and a much, much better UX than SMS | in almost every way, especially when travelling | internationally with multiple devices. | unhammer wrote: | That sucks. The data fee argument makes no sense - you could just | have a setting or warning or something for those who live in | places where you have to pay for sms (I know every setting | introduces complexity, but I that's got to be nothing compared to | the level of engineering needed for all those other fancy | features in Signal). | MonkeyMalarky wrote: | It's completely backwards for me. When I'm out of data for a | month, SMSs still work. I've had to press and hold the send | button to revert to SMS on many occasions. | codethief wrote: | What's even worse is that for you (and I) removal of SMS | support will mean that out message history will suddenly be | inconsistent as existing SMS messages will be removed. | stirfish wrote: | I agree with this - I already get a little popup telling me a | message to a 6-digit number might cost me money. Just reuse | that pop-up or something. | godelski wrote: | I see a lot of pushback against this but even WhatsApp doesn't | have this feature. Signal is just a small team of hackers (like 2 | dozen employees) fighting against big tech (thousands of | employees/developers). They aren't going to be able to support | everything big tech does and what big tech doesn't. It is a pick | your battle thing. | | I do think Signal deserves a lot of criticism but I'm always | amazed how a forum of programmers and highly tech literate users | just trashes a small team of hackers fighting against big tech. | They are open source. We are the ones that can help them. There | are plenty of custom builds out there (that do access official | Signal servers) and you can build this feature back in if you | want. I don't think it is a problem if Signal decides it has more | important features to support with their tiny team. But if you | want more features you got to donate either time or money. This | is "HACKER" news, so get hacking. | smlavine wrote: | Very disappointing and upsetting. I use Signal as my primary | SMS/MMS app on my phone, and use a few Signal chats as well with | people. This is going to be really annoying. I'm probably going | to just stop using Signal altogether to be honest. | | Most people in my social circle use Snapchat or iMessage for | "texting", for reference. | [deleted] | josteink wrote: | I remember back when I had Android, how amazed I was that I could | just make Signal the new default messaging app, and don't worry | about who were Signal-users and who weren't. | | It made it amazingly easy to get started yourself, and also | convert others. | | Why on earth would they decide to give up that advantage? | monroewalker wrote: | I set Signal as my default messaging app until I was texted while | my phone was off and the messages never showed up later. Could | certainly have been a problem with my mobile service provider | (Xfinity Mobile), but it's not an issue I've ever had before and | seemed like an especially unsurprising result of using something | other than the default messaging app. Curious if anyone else has | had a similar experience | Daunk wrote: | I feel like all these messaging applications eventually mess up | somehow. The one I keep coming back to is Telegram. | dodgerdan wrote: | You do realise Telegram isn't secure (non-e2ee), is Russian | owned and is based in the Middle East. Enjoy whatever privacy | that provides. | Daunk wrote: | Mmm... You can use end-to-end encryption with Telegram if | security is your main concern. I don't see how it being | "Russian owned" is of any concern, but if you feel like | privacy is an issue then you're free to claim their $300,000 | prize at stake or just take part of their ongoing bug bounty | programme and be rewarded by spotting flaws. | PenguinCoder wrote: | Don't need to rely on a vulnerability or flaw, when you | own/have the keys to the kingdom as it stands. | Georgelemental wrote: | Based in the Middle East instead of Russia, because the | founders specifically care about avoiding Russian government | censorship | dodgerdan wrote: | And they picked a country known for its poor rule of law, | constitutional protections and respect for privacy. | [deleted] | zppln wrote: | > There are three big reasons why we're removing SMS support for | the Android app now: prioritizing security and privacy, ensuring | people aren't hit with unexpected messaging bills, and creating a | clear and intelligible user experience for anyone sending | messages on Signal. | | Pretty weak reasoning to me. Just do what Apple does and color | sms messages some other color or whatever. Problem solved. | | This is gonna make me drop Signal. I use it as my default sms app | and have been very happy with it, but most of my conversations | (although most actual messages are Signal) are still over sms so | it'll have to go. I can't be bothered to roll a bunch of | different apps. | | Still, I'm grateful for the work the Signal team has done over | the years. Sad to see us part ways! | nstbayless wrote: | Signal already colours SMS and encrypted messages differently. | Unecrypted (SMS) messages are grey; encrypted messages are | blue. | chungy wrote: | I completely disagree and am disappointed in this decision. One | app on my phone to handle all my messages is easier than making a | context switch per-contact. | | I also think it'll hurt the value proposition when getting people | to join signal. Not overcomplicating the messaging scenario was a | big winner to do that. | alerighi wrote: | > all my messages is easier than making a context switch per- | contact | | A user already has: | | - WhatsApp | | - Telegram | | - Facebook Messanger | | - Instagram that has direct messages | | - the good old email, or better, many of them | | - Microsoft Teams for company communications | | - Discord for communications with group of friends | | - the old SMS (that I didn't even know that in some parts of | the world were still used, since I receive them only for 2 | factor codes, notifications about my card transactions, and | spam) | | Adding another app is that a big deal? By the way I don't use | Signal, but not for the reason of not having another app on the | phone, just because I don't know anyone that has it and | actively use it. | aeturnum wrote: | You're right that there are many messengers available and | Signal will, at best, be one of many that people juggle based | on who they are contacting. | | That's why it was a huge advantage that, on Android, Signal | could replace a SMS client. You weren't adding _yet another_ | messenger to the list, you were replacing the SMS client with | one that _could_ send secure messages. That made "switching" | to Signal (which, ofc, was not a switch at all for my friends | who use SMS) much easier for me. I could continue texting my | friends and seamlessly switch to secure messaging if they | ever got signal. | | Contrast this with my friends who kept their old SMS client | who reliably forget to check / use signal and generally tend | to go back to texting me in a few weeks. Even if you send 0 | signal messages for a long time, by switching you SMS client | you are already setup to receive them and will habitually | open an app that supports E2E encryption. | | For example - Facebook Messenger also supports sending and | receiving SMS messages - likely because they've done the | research and found it drives adoption. | forgotmypw17 wrote: | Yes, adding another app is a big deal. It is cognitive load, | which may be negligible for some, but a lot for others. | | Personally, I use only two of those apps you listed for | messaging, and for all the others, I say, "Sorry, I don't use | that one." | chungy wrote: | Does anyone actually have all those? I certainly don't. I | have Signal, Element, Telegram and I even think that's | excessive. I can at least manage it, most RL contacts I know | would not. | alerighi wrote: | Well, not all of them, but usually you expect a young | person to have all of them. Except Microsoft Teams, the | company may use other media, and Discord. | | Hell, even my aunt that doesn't know nothing about | technology has WhatsApp and had me install Telegram because | the church opened a channel on it! | fyvhbhn wrote: | You couldn't have one messenger for all contacts before, except | you forced everyone to either signal or sms | monetus wrote: | Signal could SMS anyone in your regular contacts app; the | fallback option in tfa is what doesn't force people. Now, it | will. | guerrilla wrote: | Absolutely not. Nobody wants to have to use a second app, | especially after having it this way forever. Where's the | change.org petetion? | | I will be recommending against using Signal for any reason | whatsoever to unless this decision changes. If it goes through, | I'll move myself and everyone to something else. The options for | e2e encryption are many today and I already have to have a bunch | of these apps, so Signal becomes pointless. If they do this, | they'll do worse later. Better to get out now at the "first" red | flag. | gal_anonym wrote: | I'm happy with the change, SMS to should be sent through native | SMS app, while Signal is just another chat client. Never | understood why they have decided to overtake the default SMS app. | tmikaeld wrote: | I've converted a lot of people to Signal and I'm 100% sure that | they will abandon it, they only want 1 messenger app. | branon wrote: | SMS/MMS needs to die at this point. I am glad to see Signal take | a hard line here even though it will cause some headache for | users, of which I am one, though I do not use it to send outgoing | SMS/MMS. | | These protocols are insecure, not private, and fundamentally | incompatible with Signal's mission. Supporting them at all, while | highly convenient, is a queer oxymoron for an app like Signal. We | have to rip the bandaid off eventually. | daedalus_j wrote: | The theory is good, but when my non-technical schoolteacher | neighbor wants to use her iPhone to tell me that my package was | delivered to her house incorrectly she's going to pop open her | iMessage app and look up my phone number, and that's going to | come to me as an SMS. | | There's no chance I'm going to get her to install Signal, she | doesn't need it, her circle is almost all blue-bubble iPhone | users who don't value anything Signal adds over what iMessages | gives them. | | This doesn't kill SMS/MMS. Not even a little tiny bit. All it | does is make _MY_ life more irritating because I have multiple | apps that I have to deal with now. The way to kill it is to | make something better that people WANT to use, that offers the | extra value to make it worth the effort. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | It needs to die when a federated replacement is available by | default on all phones. | stirfish wrote: | I left some feedback asking them to reconsider. | | https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/requests/new | akamoonknight wrote: | Thanks, I'm sure Signal devs to some extent look at HN, but was | looking for a way to concretely let them know about the | potential damage I see this causing. | keb_ wrote: | Unfortunately, at least in the U.S., most inter-OS text-messaging | is still done via SMS. Signal was godsend in this field because I | can slowly convince my network to switch to Signal (and this in | turn had a recursive network effect as then _they_ would do | similarly). This change will mean Signal will become another | bucket on my phone (along with WhatsApp) where I can talk to only | a select few of my contacts. | oezi wrote: | Why doesn't anybody fork the Signal clients? There are so many | bad design decision in the clients (for instance no message | backup on iOS or no way to save all media to storage | automatically) that I don't understand why people accept the | Signal Foundation's stewardship of the client code. | NoGravitas wrote: | Because while both the server and the client are Open Source, | the server doesn't federate. If you want to be able to | communicate with anyone, you have to use the official server | instance. And the official server instance doesn't allow | unofficial clients (though some clients seem to get away with | it for a while). | Aissen wrote: | There are forked clients, but usually you can't use Signal's | server infrastructure, so you need to roll your own, and now it | brings another set of problems. | xcdzvyn wrote: | You're not allowed to: | https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... | _emacsomancer_ wrote: | Molly[1], a fork of Signal, seems to work fine. I've used it | for a long time and never had any issues with it (and it | connects to Signal fine). But for security reasons one of their | changes was dropping SMS, so switching to it won't do you any | good there. | | [1]: https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android | EGreg wrote: | Wait. Doesn't Signal use SMS to confirm your account? | | I think the only one that's totally anonymous is Wickr | timbit42 wrote: | Briar runs over Tor. | ortusdux wrote: | One Signal feature that I always wanted, and will apparently | never get, was the ability to send the same message via SMS & | data, and have the duplicate cancel out on the other end. Service | is spotty in my region, and I routinely have either cellular or | data connectivity. | nstbayless wrote: | I initially downloaded Signal assuming it had that feature. | Then they removed encrypted SMS entirely: | https://signal.org/blog/goodbye-encrypted-sms/ -- I almost | uninstalled the app then. | alexmuro wrote: | This will directly lead to me no longer using signal. What are | other people switching to for their default sms client on | android? | willmacdonald wrote: | I had frequently ran into problems trying to receive SMS 2FA | tokens using Signal. Had to switch back to the default app on | Android. | agilob wrote: | >Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon) | | Literally the only reason I recommend others and use Signal | myself? | | Seriously, Signal doesn't have the userbase to drop SMS support. | All my Signal contacts use WhatsApp or Telegram that I already | have installed. I use signal mostly as a SMS app, secondly as E2E | communication. It will be easier to uninstall Signal. | PenguinCoder wrote: | Seriously. I don't want to use another locked in messenger app, | that everyone else must use or I won't get their messages. I | use signal because it's secure, but also because it's low | friction and seamless into SMS if the other user doesn't have | signal. This is another step in the wrong direction for Signal. | marktl wrote: | Disappointing | _jsnk wrote: | I'm very upset by this decision. I've been using Signal as my SMS | app for a very long time. | | Messages that I would have sent via SMS currently will | automatically get sent via Signal if the person I'm sending to | has started using Signal without my knowledge. This has happened | in several instances where I was pleasantly surprised to see a | friend had started using Signal. Now that I'm forced into a | separate SMS app, this will no longer be a possibility. I | certainly won't be firing up Signal to see if a contact has | joined before sending them an SMS. | giskou wrote: | I have been receiving notifications that a person in my contact | list is now using Signal for years. | | Apart from that, your use case has another possible issue. If a | person stops using Signal, your messages will go to the void | until Signal actually removes the user and your client switches | back to SMS. This has caused a lot of confusion for some of my | friends when I switched my signal account to a different phone | number. | | I think it's more reliable to use Signal for Signal. | alerighi wrote: | Well this is also a problem. As it's said in the article, you | risk getting charged for an SMS, that in some countries are | expensive, most mobile plan in my country have 30+Gb for 7 | euros at month, but SMS are 20 cent *EACH*. Practically in my | country nobody uses SMS, and SMS are used only to receive 2 | factor authentication codes (and spam). | | Anyway a normal person already uses multiple messaging | applications: WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messanger, Instagram | direct messages, the good old email, SMS (I guess somebody they | are still used reading the comments), adding Signal it's not | that big deal. | roter wrote: | This. Now you have to remember who is in Signal and who isn't. | All because apparently the double-check mark for messages | between Signal users and the unlocked icon for SMS messages is | too hard to comprehend. SMH. | bxparks wrote: | If I understand this, if I use SMS, I can send to everyone. If | I use Signal, I can send to Signal users only. But I don't | remember who's on Signal, and who's not. So I guess I will stop | using Signal. | usrusr wrote: | If I want to message someone I open the contact and click on | one of the messengers that are listed for the phone number. | Why would I leave the memorizing to my brain? | fluidcruft wrote: | Huh. I've never used contacts that way. I suppose it could | work but that's a new extra step. My Contacts list is | gigantic and full of bullshit I don't care about because | it's sync'd from work and flooded with people I don't know. | Usually I just find the conversation from the chronological | list (which is more of how I remember things). Maybe | there's some way to sort contacts by recent use? It just | seems like that's leaking metadata to push all of that | context into Contacts. Anyway that seems maybe plausible if | it can index or springboard to convos in other apps. | jcul wrote: | Off topic slightly, but it amazes me how much SMS is used in | outside my country (maybe just US?). I literally never SMS any | personal contacts, usually WhatsApp. Even business stuff, | sometimes initial contact may be SMS and then could often move | to WhatsApp. I use signal with a small circle of friends, but | no one I know uses SMS anymore. | fluidcruft wrote: | Exactly. Dumbest idea ever. Apparently Signal thinks they can | recruit all of us as their sales force. | stirfish wrote: | I feel like I somehow caused this mess by becoming a monthly | donor. | | It feels like I just got my friends to put letters in envelopes | instead of only using postcards. Now we all have to drive to two | different post offices - one for letters and one for cards - | because the original office will stop delivering cards. Everyone | is just going to go back to using postcards. | | >Dropping support for SMS messaging also frees up our capacity to | build new features (yes, like usernames) that will ensure Signal | is fresh and relevant into the future | | I don't buy this. | bjt2n3904 wrote: | Oof. As an Android user, this sucks. Though I have my | frustrations with Signal (cellphone number, address book hashing, | centralization, the cryptocurrency stuff, removing storage | encryption) -- it's still the only app I trust. Even more than | the stock Samsung messaging app. I don't want to trust another, | and I don't want to have to bifurcate my messaging flow. | | All of my family use iOS though, so this is already their use | case. I understand less code is more secure, and a unified | codebase between devices is good -- heck. This might even lead to | no more phone number requirement. | | But this still stinks for my use case. | | FWIW though, I was more upset about the cryptocurrency thing. | martsa1 wrote: | Feels like an odd move but whatever. | | Does anyone here have a good suggestion for an SMS app for | Android? | aeturnum wrote: | Just to add to the frustrating elements of this shockingly bad | decision: | | In my friend circle, at least, it's common for people to go in | and out of using Signal. They might have had it on an old phone | and forget to install it on the new phone. Whatever - life | happens. | | Signal can't know if someone who used to have their number | registered with Signal has stopped using it. Signal will still | display them as a user and accept messages. It's been invaluable | for me to be able, if I message a friend after a break in | communication, to send a signal message...and then, if I don't | get a response, a SMS message. If they respond to the SMS I can | see in our history that they had signal and switched at some | point. This change takes that away and will make it must more | difficult to deal with inconsistent adopters. | jessfyi wrote: | The idea that they can't improve the UI/UX to better inform to | the people who repeatedly, accidentally send insecure | messages/sms (ignoring the existing words "Unsecured SMS" in the | chat field, the unlocked lock near messages, the unlocked lock | next to the phone, or the giant banner that occasionally drops | down that tells you the % of secure messages you can be sending | if you pester a contact into grabbing signal) as one of the | reasons for this change is frankly bullshit. | | Changing the Send button's icon to "SMS" or a color/border change | ala iMessage are ideas off the top of my head and I'm sure | they've got designers significantly more talented than I am that | can think of better ones. We've seen very little iteration there | that's indicated the significance of that problem...and frankly | if they highlighted this as a tactic vs endless spam texts more | people would be receptive to this news. As it stands I think this | is going to significantly reduce their number of casual users. In | fact I'm willing to bet that the cohort of users who are used as | justification are the _least_ likely to convince their contacts | to switch to Signal. | | Don't get me wrong, their real desire to increase the amount of | people sending _secure_ messages via Signal alone + resource mgmt | in the face of a recession are valid. But acting as a unified | messenger (with better link unfurling, threaded replies, and | reactions after Google killed Allo vs the default messenger that | spent _years_ getting them) was the trojan horse onto many of my | friends ' and colleagues' phones. Now that there's parity I can | see more people just opting into the default messenger/FB | Messenger + Whatsapp combo because more people exist there and | we're all just _lazy_. | Pr0ject217 wrote: | > "Letting a deeply insecure messaging protocol have a place in | the Signal interface is inconsistent with our values and with | what people expect when they open Signal" | | > "We've heard repeatedly from people who've been hit with high | messaging fees after assuming that the SMS messages they were | sending were Signal messages" | | > "We can only do so much on the design side to prevent such | misunderstandings" | | It sounds like they are trying to protect users from themselves. | roter wrote: | Indeed. Double-check icon indicates Signal messages. Unlocked | icon indicates non-Signal. My 85-year-old mother understands | this. | mancerayder wrote: | In the long list of SMS alternatives below, can someone tell me | what's wrong with the default Android SMS? I use Signal and | regular SMS, why would I install a second SMS option for non- | Signal ? | jacooper wrote: | I think this will only affect US users, because nobody uses SMS | outside the US. And switching between apps is the expected thing | to do when trying to push people to another platform, | | I have telegram, signal, whatsapp and Element on my phone, this | is why the new digital markets act is going to be revolutionary, | especially with bridge friendly platforms like matrix.org. | plsbenice34 wrote: | I have never been to the US but lived in multiple countries and | they all used SMS. May I ask where you live that doesnt use | SMS? | makeitdouble wrote: | I hear this a lot but this is way too caricatural. | | For one, commercial services will go through SMS to contact | you. Delivery people asking if my mailbox can fit parcels won't | be through Whatsapp or Messenger. | | Then you'll also want to compartmentalize and limit how some | people can reach you. That means if you're already giving them | your phone number, you don't want them on the other messaging | services as well. | | Life is complicated, and there will be endless use cases for | the baseline, default messaging platform. | jiripospisil wrote: | > I think this will only affect US users, because nobody uses | SMS outside the US | | This is not true at all, at least for Czechia. The number is | going down but it's still in billions (for a country with | population of ~10.5M). Quoting from the official annual report: | | > In the number of SMS messages sent from mobile networks in | 2018, CTU estimates - in the context of the increasing | popularity of OTT messengers (e.g., WhatsApp, Facebook | Messenger, Viber, etc.) - a slight decrease relative to 2017, | approximately by 2% to 8.21 billion SMS messages. | | https://www.ctu.eu/sites/default/files/obsah/stranky/284221/... | fluidcruft wrote: | How do you know if your contacts use Signal and know to use that | app instead of SMS/Messages or whatever? | | With the SMS integration it was pretty easy because it would just | switch over if the other person had Signal or if/when they signed | up in the future. | | What's the workflow now? Manually ask them on SMS if they use | Signal? Just try it and see if it works? | | This sounds like one of those "Don't Worry! Rejoice! We're | breaking your things!" announcements that hasn't even thought | about how people use Signal IRL. | | I'm going to stop my monthly subscription to Signal Foundation. | fluidcruft wrote: | Edit: after reading the explanation in the community forum | linked here | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33181636 | | I have instead come around to support this move 200% and have | instead doubled my monthly subscription. The explanation at the | blog post is an abomination, however. | | Leave SMS and all its shitty successors for Apple and Google | and carriers to kill/maintain. | velosol wrote: | Holy crap you weren't kidding! | | The blog post needs to be shelved and redone as every listed | reason feels post hoc while the reasons listed at that link | ([1] for anyone who dislikes friction) are grounded in | reality and show Signal being proactive. | | [1]: https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog- | removing-sms... | 7steps2much wrote: | Till now I kep't signal around despite the fact that I wasn't | really getting that many messages on the app. | | Now I am faced with a decision: * Do I keep signal around, for | that one to two messages a month I receive? * Or do I get rid of | it, forcing my contacts back on Whatsapp/regular SMS? | | To be perfectly honest, I am thinking about just gettting rid of | it. No need to keep yet another communication channel around when | I can't get rid of the other ones anyways. :( | jeremysalwen wrote: | In addition to what everyone else here is saying (this is the | most mind-bogglingly stupid idea you could imagine, which will | instantly kill the adoption of Signal in the US) I want to point | out that the purported reasons for removing this feature would be | _completely_ solved by hiding SMS behind a setting. If you want | to be EVEN MORE paranoid you could periodically warn users if | this setting is enabled, just like they periodically bug you | about your pin. The only explanation I can have for this decision | is that the real reasons for it have nothing to do with those | given. | fortylove wrote: | Signal consistently has been a poor UX for me. Sure it's super | secure and that's nice. But I don't really care about the | security of the convo with my aging parents. I care that they can | easily respond to me. | | I'm happy we have an available secure chat for people that | need/want it, but I'm more than happy to keep it relegated to | niche uses until it gets more user friendly. | paulv wrote: | I pretty much only use the signal protocol to chat with my | husband, who I convinced to install the app because I could help | with any problems that arose. I'm not going to use one app to | communicate with just him and another to communicate with | everyone else, nor is he. | | The result of this change is that we will stop using signal all | together. They've accomplished the exact thing they said they | want to avoid. | Jayschwa wrote: | I am unhappy with this change, but I can cope with it. I'm more | concerned with my tech-challenged family members who don't | understand the distinction between different messaging services | or have any understanding of security. Until now, Signal has been | good for them because they only need to deal with one application | and they get some added security among our group. After this | change, I fear they'll just use the SMS app exclusively (out of | inertia) and Signal will collect dust. | geewee wrote: | This feels like a slap in the face. I get the privacy | ramifications, but one of the really strong aspects of Signal to | me was to go all-in on privacy when needed, and default to | something sensible when it wasn't. I'll definitely need to | reconsider whether or not to continue my monthly donation, and I | don't like that at all. | [deleted] | spcebar wrote: | You can send feedback to support@signal.org. I don't know if it | will do any good, but I sent them my respectful two cents. | NoGravitas wrote: | > If you do use Signal as your default SMS app on Android, you | will need to select a new default SMS app on your phone. If you | want to keep them, you'll also need to export your SMS messages | from Signal into that new app. | | This messaging seems a little tone-deaf, given that _there is no | way to export SMS messages from Signal_. Apparently it 's | possible, using a third-party piece of software, to decrypt your | backups and extract the messages, but that's not exactly a | reasonable thing to expect people to do. | | One of the reasons I liked Signal was because it was easy to get | normal people to start using it, because they could just set it | up as their SMS app, and continue life as normal, just getting | the benefits of encryption for any of their contacts that were | also using Signal. Now there's not notably any reason to use | Signal as opposed to, say, Matrix. | fyvhbhn wrote: | One more reason: signal still allows for easier discovery of | other users, because it forces phone number sharing | fitblipper wrote: | They are enabling the ability to export SMS from signal now: | https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-up... | roter wrote: | Confirmed. Turned on the beta program and exported ~1000 text | messages over to Google Messages. Settings->Chats->SMS and | MMS->Export. Involves changing the default app for SMS | between Signal and Google Messages. | saghm wrote: | The phrase "one step forward, two steps back" comes to mind | 0xbadc0de5 wrote: | Terrible decision. You don't improve the average person's | security posture by increasing the barrier-to-entry of encrypted | messaging - and removing SMS support is doing exactly that. | Signal -is- was great BECAUSE it made the transition from SMS to | Signal so seamless. | | Aside: Funny how quickly the wheels fall off as soon as Moxie | leaves. (https://signal.org/blog/new-year-new-ceo/) | Melcupa wrote: | Wow :-( | | Just a week ago I replaced the sms app with signal for two | people. | | This was the main reason why I just installed signal and still | use it vs telegram because of this exact feature :-( | | Come on signal what ya doing stop! | fuddle wrote: | To be honest I never knew this feature existed. | deeesstoronto wrote: | I've only found only one good option to unify messaging on | android. Blackberry Hub will bring together SMS, WhatsApp, | Signal, multiple emails, Instagram, etc. | krylon wrote: | I am not so much upset about the decision to remove SMS support, | but about the reasons they give. It smells like a really lame | excuse. | | But whatever. I only send and receive SMS very rarely these days, | so I installed Silence on my phone. It's still annoying, though. | Having one app for SMS and encrypted messaging was very | convenient. | Melatonic wrote: | I never used SMS through Signal and I will not miss this in the | slightest. | jbb67 wrote: | I use signal as my SMS program and a few people who have signal. | if I can't use it as my SMS program I'm not going to keep using | it for the handful of people who have signal and will likely just | go back to SMS for everyone. | | oh well | fuddle wrote: | To be honest, I never knew this feature existed. | resfirestar wrote: | How is it a serious UX/design problem? iMessage just makes SMS | messages green and it's so effective at conveying the difference | that people claim it creates social stigma against Android users. | technoooooost wrote: | Well there you have it, these crooks probably accepted a few | million$ by the feds to kill the app. | annadane wrote: | Is this Moxie's decision? | glogla wrote: | Very likely. Moxie was always horrible. | vabmit wrote: | Someone will fork or clone Signal and distribute an app that | continues to support SMS and MMS. | | I would drop Signal for that app, even if I had to pay for it. | throw7 wrote: | Bad move. They should be expanding support to include RCS (which | can support e2ee, although I don't know if it's at the provider | level or at client level). | nelblu wrote: | I understand SMS is not relevant outside of US/Canada. But since | signal chose to remove this feature they just lost a regular | donor. | mgbmtl wrote: | I for one welcome the change, because my phone does not have an | SMS plan (data only) and the "send by SMS" is a bit confusing. | | A messaging app should have one clear behavior per interface. | This was "maybe secure, maybe not". I have an SMS app for that | (well, VoIP-sms, because I'm weird). | 3836293648 wrote: | How does your phone even work if you cannot at least receive | SMS? | dopa42365 wrote: | Receiving SMS is free in [nearly everywhere]. | | Not that anyone really uses SMS anymore in [nearly | everywhere]. | stirfish wrote: | > "send by SMS" is a bit confusing | | Can you say more about what's confusing about this for you? | mgbmtl wrote: | I don't like explaining to people that "yes it can do sms, | and signal is sort of sms but not really" etc. | | and the workflow when adding someone is different (waiting | for approval or not). | Xelynega wrote: | You sound misguided if you're trying to explain the details | of signal to get them to use it. All they need to | understand to use the app is "its sms", any e2ee they | benefit from as a result are completely in the background. | johntrain wrote: | Can anyone recommend a good SMS Android app? | mehlmao wrote: | I've used ChompSMS (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details? | id=com.p1.chompsm...) for the past 10 years or so, side-by-side | with Signal. I prefer keeping secure messaging and insecure | messaging separate. | johntrain wrote: | Thanks! | Melatonic wrote: | None will do RCS so you basically have to use Googles | neogodless wrote: | Personally like TextraSMS. Has a free ad-supported version, but | I paid to remove ads when it was on sale several years ago | (maybe $1). | | 4.4 stars. I believe it's $3 or $5 to remove ads now. | | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.textra | NoGravitas wrote: | Further -- can anyone recommend a good Open Source SMS Android | app? The only ones I can find are AOSP Messaging and Simple SMS | Messenger, both of which are "Okay". | m4lvin wrote: | QKSMS is so good I almost forgot that I am using it. | | https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.moez.QKSMS/ | NoGravitas wrote: | Ah, nice, thanks. I didn't see it in my initial F-Droid | search. | [deleted] | jacobsenscott wrote: | I like the default messages app. | _dhruva wrote: | Apple does not seem to think this is a problem. Their default | Message app supporting both SMS/text and iMessage. They have an | opt-in to send via SMS if iMessage fails and this gives it more | reliability too. | fluidcruft wrote: | It would actually be pretty funny if Apple enabled/defaulted | end-to-end encryption in iMessage used that to bash Google's | green vs blue messages whining. | mderazon wrote: | Outside I think mostly the US, SMS is basically only used for | spam and 2fa messages. I can't remember the last time I | communicated with someone via SMS to be honest. | | To hear that people use it in group chats is mind boggling to me. | guerrilla wrote: | No. It's uniquitous in Europe. | Kiro wrote: | Where do you live? | mderazon wrote: | Europe (Portugal) | Krasnol wrote: | I'm with you. Totally confused about the outcry and use cases. | Sounds like the 90s over here. | endorphine wrote: | Same here. I'm pretty sure by now this is a local thing. | dzikimarian wrote: | US is iPhone-land. iPhone users default to iMessage and | "don't want another app", so SMS is still going strong, as | it's only bridge between ecosystems. | | Rest of the world is more diverse, so iPhone users don't get | to force their default on everyone (as it's crappy if you | don't have an iPhone). Also Google constantly fails to build | vaiable, cross platform alternative. Therefore everyone is | used to having a few apps. | | Basically situation in US is what you get if you allow entire | nation to be put in walled garden. | | Also it's absurd, that instant messaging, that had zero | meaningful innovation over last 20 years, still isn't over | open protocol and we tolerate that's used by corporations to | pressure customers into their ecosystems. | aabajian wrote: | Alright, it's fine for a company to remove features, if they are | honest about _why_ they are doing so. It 's obvious none of the | reasons given are due to user complaints. The truth is, they are | removing SMS because they don't own the SMS platform (e.g. it's | not a walled-garden like WhatsApp). Would it kill them to just be | honest? Yes, it's less secure, but no end-user is saying, "Please | remove SMS as it's not secure." | cptroot wrote: | I don't think that's true? There are clearly users who are | annoyed at being able to send insecure and possibly expensive | SMS messages in their secure messaging app. | Xelynega wrote: | Then don't enable the default-off setting to allow the app to | send SMS? | yolovoe wrote: | I'm sad. I actually donate to signal every month, but now that | will likely stop and I'll have look for alternatives. | | Rip. This is definitely going to make it harder to get signal | adoption. My partner will surely stop using it too now and I'll | have to convince my friends to migrate to yet another platform. | eatwater123 wrote: | This is an awful decision. I've converted some friends and family | to Signal over the past years (it took a while) and it is now | their default messaging app on their phones. This is going to | confuse them and is going to make it difficult for me to keep | convincing them that Signal is the route to use. ("Why do I need | 3 apps (Android Messages, Signal, Whatsapp) to talk to people?") | Fiahil wrote: | chasil wrote: | Hug of death it is. | mynameisvlad wrote: | Is the snark and reducing of the parent comment to a "bla bla | bla" really necessary? We're all adults here, we can make a | point while treating the other person with respect. | zuck9 wrote: | Sounds like more messaging app proliferation will lead to | services like Texts.com / Matrix get even more popular. | dymk wrote: | I dunno, all my friends use at least a handful of messaging | apps (iMessage, FB messenger, Discord, Telegram, SMS). Sure | people grumble about a new messaging app but the younger | generation seems to not have an issue adopting new things. | TheNewsIsHere wrote: | I wouldn't frame it as an issue around adopting new things. | Some don't care, some go with the flow, and some prefer to | make active choices about these kinds of things. | | I am very intentional and active when it comes to what has | push notification privileges. I factor that into my app use | consideration. I have multiple email accounts in two | different email apps, each that send me notifications. I have | Signal, Discord, iMessages and SMS. I have a few Google chat | apps. I used to have WhatsApp and Wickr and Telegram. I have | Skype, Teams, and two Mattermost servers. | | It's exhausting to constantly switch between these, so over | the course of a few years I've been very clear in where | people can expect to reach me reliably. If you need or want | to chat with me on Discord, Skype, or Google whatever you | need to send me an iMessage, SMS, Mattermost, or Signal | message. Sending me a message anywhere else will get you a | response only the next time I open that app. That only | happens when someone specifically asks. | | I'm OK with having 63847394038 chat and video calling apps, | but I'm not OK with being instantaneously notified by an | infinity such apps. I can't be that available. | usrusr wrote: | And while older generations might be less willing to use a | high number of apps side by side, having one kind of message | in one app and the other kind of message in the other app is | still much less confusing to them than dealing with the | subtleties of multiprotocol if everything is forced through | the single one-size-fits-all interface of a messenger that | tries to do SMS on the side. | eatwater123 wrote: | Yeah, I can understand that; but I've brought over various | older family members, and non-tech friends (as in people that | wouldn't have ever heard the words Discord or Telegram before | in their lives) to Signal. That's who this will impact most. | theLastOfCats wrote: | Why three tho? Use one - Telegram. | rodgerd wrote: | I, too, enjoy sharing my message history with the various | Russian intelligence services. | zingplex wrote: | I don't think Telegram should really be seen as an | alternative to Signal. It doesn't use E2E encryption by | default. | bee_rider wrote: | Isn't Telegram partially closed source? | _-david-_ wrote: | There is an unofficial FOSS version. I'm not sure if it is | feature complete, secure, etc. | | https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS | chasil wrote: | I use Silence. It hasn't been updated in a while, but I like | the way it looks. | | I don't know anybody else who uses Silence so I could exchange | encrypted messages with them. | | Oh well. Maybe somebody here could resurrect this? | | https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.smssecure.smssecure/ | | https://git.silence.dev/Silence/Silence-Android/ | Melatonic wrote: | Yea this is super cool | hgomersall wrote: | Oh, I initially thought you were make a post-modern geeky | witicism or something, but no, it really is a thing. | pavon wrote: | I absolutely agree. Personally, I've managed to convert around | 3 times as many Android users as iOS users, because of this | feature. And the few people who stopped using Signal after | starting using it did so because of limitations in the SMS/MMS | features (fewer number of users allowed in group text, etc). I | fully expect to loose 2/3 of my Signal contacts as a result of | this decision, and may drop it myself if the number remaining | is too small to be worth running a separate app, as most of the | ones left will probably be on Matrix as well. | | It also puts a spot-light on the "your phone number is your | username" policy. This made perfect sense when you are using | Signal for opportunistic encryption of texting. It is much less | justifiable when using it as a Silo'd app. I really hope they | change that and give people who were waiting for that change | time to join before killing SMS support. | Melatonic wrote: | Signal encrypts your regular texts? I thought it specifically | did not do that? | mynameisvlad wrote: | They say "opportunistic" as in similar to how iMessage | works. If you're both on the platform, it's encrypted but | you still can communicate with everyone else from one app. | | That's a _major_ boost for those that might not | particularly care about encryption to look for specific | messaging apps, while still helping by building out the | network slowly over time. | tadfisher wrote: | The downside is that they will opportunistically send | your messages via Signal. If the recipient chooses to not | have SIgnal installed any longer, then your messages go | into a black hole. | | This became much more of a problem for me after they | rolled out their shitcoin; suddenly my techie friends | were just not responding to messages, and Signal as my | main SMS app was not falling back to SMS for these folks. | mynameisvlad wrote: | Apple has the same problem, and an article and entire | process for disabling it out of band, plus a heartbeat so | it's done automatically after a while if you don't reset | your phone. It's a major problem. | | I've only done the switch from iOS to Android once and I | remember it was a pain for a few days until everything | realized I didn't have iMessage anymore. | technothrasher wrote: | Even without an iPhone I sometimes miss texts from people | using iMessage because my only occasionally used MacBook | seems to randomly like to turn messages back on, and so | anything from an Apple user ends up there instead of on | my phone. It stays that way until I figure out I'm | missing texts and go find them on the MacBook and have to | manually turn off messages to it again. | chimeracoder wrote: | > If the recipient chooses to not have SIgnal installed | any longer, then your messages go into a black hole. | | For two weeks, messages will be shown as sent but not | delivered, and after two weeks Signal will not let you | send messages to that number until it reconnects to the | Signal servers. | | For comparison, Apple automatically sends all SMS | messages via iMessage opportunistically, and if the user | then switches to another phone, all SMS messages from iOS | users will be _silently discarded in perpetuity_. This is | a big problem because the recipient has no idea that they | 're missing messages, and also if they no longer have | access to an iPhone, there's no way for them to | deregister their phone number from iMessage. | zwily wrote: | That hasn't been true for awhile: | | https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ | | They will also deregister you automatically after some | period of time. What you described is the situation | several years ago, but it's much better now. | chimeracoder wrote: | That's a link to deregister a phone number from iMessage | without an iPhone, which is good, but I don't see any | text on that page that confirms that they'll deregister | you automatically, or if there's any user-visible | indication of the issue. If that's the case, then I'm | glad they finally addressed it, because it was definitely | a problem for far too long. | | In that case, Signal's current behavior would be | comparable to Apple's, if Apple also deregisters you | after a period of inactivity. | [deleted] | GeekyBear wrote: | > The downside is that they will opportunistically send | your messages via Signal. If the recipient chooses to not | have SIgnal installed any longer, then your messages go | into a black hole. | | The user cannot just log out of Signal and have the app | on other people's devices automatically fall back on SMS | the way it works with iMessage? | mynameisvlad wrote: | A lot of people will just delete an app and think there | were no side-effects. There was an article here a few | weeks ago about people not cancelling in-app | subscriptions after deleting an app. Apple will remind | you after it deletes it, Google does not. | | Logging out might not even be enough, depending on the | logic on Signal's side. Do they use active devices, or | just that an account exists? | godelski wrote: | > It also puts a spot-light on the "your phone number is your | username" policy. | | I'm willing to bet that this decision is just jumping the gun | by a month or two since usernames are around the corner (code | exists, just not enabled. Can be used if built from source). | | Though I haven't had a hard time converting (Android) users | by using another app. Especially people that already use WA. | The "other app" just comes off as normal. Apple is a | different ball game because the walled garden, but that's | also the weakness because you can't send photos/videos in | group chats with mixed devices (but Signal can). | matsemann wrote: | Is this outcry US specific? Don't think I've sent a single SMS | the last decade here in EU. | ascorbic wrote: | The US seems to be the only place where everyone uses | iMessage, so Android users have to use SMS and suffer the | bizarre shaming of the green bubble. In most countries | outside the US, WhatsApp seems to be the default. SMS is just | legacy 2FA messages, and various other transactional messages | like parcel delivery notifications. | Macha wrote: | Do you use Signal in the EU? Seems to be either WhatsApp or | Telegram depending on how west or east you are. | garciansmith wrote: | Yes, exactly. The ability to send SMS from the Signal app has | meant I've been pretty successful in getting Android users to | switch to Signal. Every iOS user I know always just goes back | to using iMessage. Now many of those Android users won't bother | either. | Kirby64 wrote: | +1 to this. If Signal drops Android SMS support, I suspect | it'll create friction within my friend group that uses it. I do | not want yet another app for just text messages. No thank you. | andrepd wrote: | Honestly I'm pretty critical of the Signal app design: from the | crypto nonsense, to the removal of chat bubble colors (used to | be each person had a color, pretty useful in group chats), to | the copious amounts of whitespace that have been linearly | increasing for years, to the fact that the design has to change | and break familiarity every 6 months or the devs have a stroke. | | But I actually like this decision. It makes things less | confusing and accidental use of unsecure SMS impossible. The | downside is if you still use SMS you have to keep 2 apps, back | them up separately, etc. | | > "Why do I need 3 apps (Android Messages, Signal, Whatsapp)" | | "You need Signal to talk to people on Signal, WhatsApp to talk | to people on WhatsApp, and Messages to talk to people on SMS." | Seems more straightforward than "use WhatsApp to talk to people | on WhatsApp and Signal to talk to people on Signal _or_ SMS; | just pay attention to the color of the send button ". | stevemk14ebr wrote: | This issue for myself and many others is it makes something | that used to be transparent, entirely unsupported. The UX is | unambiguously worse. I could trust signal to upgrade my texts | for me when possible, or not when my contacts were SMS. I | don't care about always being encrypted 100% of the time. | Signal was that perfect tradeoff between privacy, and ease of | use, which is exceptionally rare. Providing this tradeoff is | what made them popular, them going against it is | counterproductive and will hurt them badly. I know this | because now I'm considering leaving myself. | fyvhbhn wrote: | > Why do I need 3 apps (Android Messages, Signal, Whatsapp) to | talk to people? | | Because Whatsapp and Signal are walled gardens. (Everyone knows | why IM>sms) | dane-pgp wrote: | > Whatsapp and Signal are walled gardens. | | Until next year? | | https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press- | room/20220701IP... | pmlnr wrote: | No. Secrecy will have backdoor keys, but that is not what | walled garden means: it means more like people have no | power over the decisions made in the garden. | JasonFruit wrote: | I also deplore this. | | I hope it's communicated well to users who aren't readers of | Signal's blog. I have relatives who use Signal, and they rely | on its fallback-to-SMS feature, possibly without fully | understanding it. I'll make sure they understand and are aware | of this change, but others may be in the same position. | xcdzvyn wrote: | I fear Signal will follow their recent trend of ignoring | unanimous user-base complaints a la Mobilecoin, fdroid, and | third-party clients. | fyvhbhn wrote: | ... phone number use, lack of interoperability, keeping | server source closed when it fits | autoexec wrote: | That ship sailed a long time ago. Signal's userbase | overwhelmingly objected to having their sensitive | information permanently stored in the cloud too, but signal | ignored them. | | https://community.signalusers.org/t/dont-want-pin-dont- | want-... | | Even when security concerns were brought up: | | https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value- | secu... | pmlnr wrote: | Signal seem to have adopted the "Decisions, not Options"[^1] | route way too well, so don't act surprised. | | This is why we need at least open source clients that can be | forked when these decisions are made. | | [^1]: https://wordpress.org/about/philosophy/ | PhasmaFelis wrote: | I have never understood why decisions and options have to be | mutually exclusive. Yes, you want to have a rock-solid, | thoughtfully-design default install for new and casual users. | You can still have an advanced control panel with everything | a power user could want. | hgomersall wrote: | Requisite XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1172/ | pmlnr wrote: | It's not mutually exclusive at all, see KDE, but it takes | more time, and people will have the option to mess it all | up. | | Taking that factor away - allowing people to mess it up - | makes it easier for developers. | daedalus_j wrote: | KDE is such a great example of how to do it right that I | didn't even think of it. It just works so well and so | transparently that I forget how great it is sometimes. | | Rock solid and both works and looks great right out of | the box. So customizable that using literally anything | else feels like using a Fisher-Price computer for | toddlers. | javajosh wrote: | That review of KDE is so over-the-top it almost reads | like satire. Is KDE really that great? (Using Gnome under | Ubuntu - no complaints here. But I also am not sure what | KDE is giving you. Control over look-and-feel of the | windowing environment? Default utility applications? | Perhaps a desktop API thick-client programmers can write | against? | numpad0 wrote: | Should offering both service and its client app be regulated? | causi wrote: | _This is an awful decision. I 've converted some friends and | family to Signal over the past years (it took a while) and it | is now their default messaging app on their phones. This is | going to confuse them and is going to make it difficult for me | to keep convincing them that Signal is the route to use._ | | I learned to stop trying to improve the technical lives of | other people after Dropbox's decision to restrict free accounts | to three devices resulted in a shitstorm of angry and confused | messages from half the people I know. | autoexec wrote: | I'm happy to share the best information I have with others | and most of them are glad that I do. | | I had recommended signal to others, but thankfully I've | already warned those same people against continuing to use | Signal years ago. Nobody was mad at me for Signal's actions | and changing your default SMS app isn't hard anyway. | | I don't think you have to stop recommending things to people | just because situations change. Hasn't everybody had some | service or software they depended on go from great to shitty? | It's just the nature of using someone else's stuff. At some | point they get greedy or busy or decide to pivot into | something different from what you want and you have to find | something new. Isn't everyone used to that? Why would they | blame you? | TheNewsIsHere wrote: | You know, I haven't really thought of it like this. Those for | whom I take an interest in their technical lives typically | get a spiel from me about whatever solution I'm offering. | That spiel often includes something about how "they'll | probably change this eventually in ways no one wants, but the | most we can do is speak up. We probably won't get options." | | But I have to admit your perspective calls to me. I can | imagine it would feel quite freeing. | | I'm in a minor mess of a situation with my dad's phone and | computer because I've tried to be helpful. Now he resists | help and that makes both of us frustrated. | daedalus_j wrote: | I've been using Signal for a long time. I have _repeatedly_ been | unable to convince iOS users to use Signal because "I don't want | another app". Android users have been much more willing to give | it a shot. | | As an android user myself, I much prefer having SMS built in | because I use the search feature often to look back through all | my SMS/Signal chats. I also regularly forward an SMS message to a | Signal user, or vice versa. I'm already starting to feel like | those iOS users who told me "I don't want another app"... | | Signal seems to be trying to move further and further from "my | preferred way to chat with people" and closer to the chat | equivalent of "that protonmail account I only log in to when I | need secrecy". | | I obviously love having security on messages in transit, but I | also like being able to keep my message history around and search | my conversations for something that happened a year ago. It seems | like Signal is on a trajectory to turn everything into | disappearing messages. Are they the "safe for activists" | communication app, or the "let's try to make as many as possible | safer by default" app? Feels like they don't know. | | And on top of it all the messaging is just frustrating. "we've | taken away an incredibly useful and heavily used feature so we | have development resource to better implement shitcoins and such" | is such an irritating defense of the decision that I disabled my | monthly donation. | the_other wrote: | > I have repeatedly been unable to convince iOS users to use | Signal | | We don't seem to have this problem so bad in the UK/Europe. | Most people I know have WhatsApp and/or Telegram, and FB | messenger, and Signal (in my friend circles); all alongside | SMS. I have very few iMessage groups, and use it mostly for | 1to1 SMS with people I don't know well. | NoGravitas wrote: | Every friend using iOS that I've convinced to use Signal has | uninstalled it. They stay registered, though, so I have to | notice that my messages aren't reaching them, and re-send as | SMS. | grammers wrote: | This. I've switched to iOS recently and I hate that I need two | apps now. Already longing to go back to Android. | MikeKusold wrote: | Just use iMessage. It's not as secure as Signal since the | server has the keys, but it's the easiest way to ensure that | the majority of text messages you send are encrypted. | | There was just an article that said that 88% of teens have an | iPhone. That means that almost all of their communication is | encrypted. | Sirened wrote: | fwiw, iMessage is actually E2E encrypted (without Apple | storing the key) if you either don't have iCloud backup | enabled OR don't enable "Message in the Cloud". | Melcupa wrote: | So when the server has the key, how can you say it's | encrypted? | | I mean in context of signal we don't just talk about some | form of transport encryption but e2e | MikeKusold wrote: | It's various levels of encryption that are acceptable | depending on your risk level. | | I'm mainly concerned about SMS spoofing and mass | surveillance. iMessage protects against that. The only | way the government can read your messages is by serving | Apple with a warrant to obtain your iCloud backup. | | If I had a lower risk tolerance, I would disable iCloud | backups to improve my security. | chaxor wrote: | I don't think people are only concerned about the | government, but rather the corporations that own your | data (via storing the encryption key to use whenever they | want, to look through whatever they want) | Melcupa wrote: | I mean you followed Snowden right? | | I would argue that if you are relevant enough apple and | sms are both equally easy to get for them. | | If we talk here about signal, I don't think the | alternative should be iMessage but telegram etc. | MikeKusold wrote: | Anecdotal evidence, but I've never had someone ask me to | join Telegram. | | In terms of encrypted messaging, the popularity in my | friend group is: | | 1. iMessage | | 2. Signal | | 3. WhatsApp (only for talking to non-US people) | | 4. Matrix | aendruk wrote: | When I switched from Android to iOS this was the number one | technical regression, and for years my go-to example of nice | things Apple keeps from us. It's unbelievable how Signal is | sabotaging itself here. | dontlaugh wrote: | You need WhatsApp anyway, you'll have several apps whatever | you do. | nobody9999 wrote: | >You need WhatsApp anyway, you'll have several apps | whatever you do. | | Do I? Not being snarky here, I just really don't understand | why I _need_ WhatsApp. | | No one I know uses WhatsApp to communicate with me. No | business I deal with uses WhatsApp to communicate with me. | | In fact, I'm not sure what value WhatsApp provides as I've | _never_ used it. | | I'd appreciate it if you'd elucidate on your point. Mostly | because if you're correct, I'm obviously missing something | extremely important. | dontlaugh wrote: | I suppose it depends where you are. I'm in Europe. | | Almost everyone I message with defaults to WhatsApp, or | even insists on it. A few also have Signal or Facebook | Messenger or iMessage. | | SMS is only for notifications and such. Even some | businesses default to WhatsApp. | aidenn0 wrote: | My understanding is that in many places outside the US | it's near-universal. I've never used it myself either. | nicholasjarnold wrote: | I agree completely here. This is terrible news from my | perspective too. I use Signal for _all messaging_ (e2e secure | or not) for the reasons that you mention. | | I've onboarded friends and family, too, ensuring them it should | be set as their default messaging app and that it _just works_. | Unfortunately, people in the general population seem to have | pretty much zero tolerance for any friction whatsoever. If they | have to use 2 apps, they'll just end up communicating with me | in the clear using their "default SMS" app on their phone. | That's what this is going to result it...a reduction in overall | message security due to people defaulting to what's | easier...which is to _not_ have to remember which app to use | for which "send a message" purpose. Fuck. | | I understand the argument about people in markets where SMS is | expensive getting screwed sometimes when they don't realize | they're sending a message over SMS. However could that not be | fairly trivially solved for with some UI notification or app | setting that warns you about this and allows the warning to be | perm-disabled if the user doesn't care!? | | I think the real reason here is this desire to transition the | service into supporting usernames, which is a topic that's been | discussed before (and is explicitly mentioned in the post). | Right now the service is tied to your phone number. After this | change I suspect it will not be or not need to be. | | This is very, very unfortunate for those of us who've convinced | a ton of non-technical friends and family to use | TextSecure->Signal over the years... | nextos wrote: | I don't like some of the decisions taken by Signal. | | However, if "dropping support for SMS messaging also frees up | our capacity to build new features (yes, like usernames)", I | think it is something I would not miss. | | Besides, I agree with them on the point that SMS leak | metadata. | anigbrowl wrote: | But that's just a bullshit promise (in the sense of not | being anchored to any commitment), no different from a | politician saying some policy initiative will create jobs | because that's how the economy works. | | SMS does leak metadata but guess what, that leakage is | going to continue because people aren't going to just cut | off their SMS-only-using friends and relatives. Now they'll | be leaking Metadata from an even less secure app, so the | user is in no way better off. | betwixthewires wrote: | This "I don't want another app" thing is senseless to me. Why? | What does it hurt having more than one communication channel? | In my experience people that say this generally have no space | on their phone, usually because of an unfettered willingness to | install the taco bell app and the Starbucks app and whatever | else. | | Their underlying reasoning is correct. SMS sucks, really really | bad. They're a secure communications channel. People see signal | and think they're secure. Signal has no business supporting | SMS. The on boarding has reached critical mass, the neyworke | effect is here. If you're smart you'll abandon SMS altogether | forever and just tell people to reach you some other way, not | ditch the actual, over the internet encrypted channel. | Waterluvian wrote: | There's another reason for iOS users to avoid Signal: It eats | up Gigabytes of storage space, refuses to ever clear it, and | the devs are rather resistant to accepting that it's even a | problem at all: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal- | iOS/issues/4916 | JustSomeNobody wrote: | Weird. Signal is my primary messaging app (on iOS) and I'm | sitting at 196MB storage used. | adfm wrote: | Since there's no server storing media, consider saving the | stuff you want and dumping all the old photos and video you | don't. It's a more secure communication tool, not an archive. | Y-bar wrote: | Yeah, that would be nice. But an export-import. Or any | backup function whatsoever is sorely missing on iOS. | Waterluvian wrote: | How do I dump all the old photos and videos? | | Because the in-app option to clear them all does not free | the space. | xeromal wrote: | People usually want both and that's what causes most people | to ignore good tools. | godelski wrote: | Signal is in a weird place where they can do no right by | users. It's a team of like 25 developers building | extremely complex software criticized by people that | don't understand security and trivialize everything. | Reddit has a lot of evangelists that can't even program. | Their community forums are a dumpster fire where users | act like "my way or the world is going to end" (see the | current username discussion. Most people are fair but you | see[0]). Anything they say on Twitter gets spammed with | questions about usernames by people that can't be | bothered to see that it is in alpha testing and available | for custom builds. And on HN everyone criticizes Signal | and compares it to Matrix which is always better for | every single purpose. | | I do like Signal and I think they have done a lot of | good. I do think they have a lot of valid criticism | against them but also I think a lot of people aren't | providing useful criticism (it is a shame that's | happening here, on a forum that should be filled with | tech experts). People also aren't realistic. A 25 person | team working at a non-profit aren't going to have the | same development capacity as a 250 person team. | | [0] (maybe go to the bottom) | https://community.signalusers.org/t/usernames-in- | signal/9157 | chaxor wrote: | What do you "Matrix is always better for every single | purpose"? Are you saying that you really believe that, or | characterizing others as saying that wrongly? I don't | know much about either, but I thought both had somewhat | new (less-tested) encryption algos (one is 'double- | ratchet' or something? that recently has shown security | vulnerabilities?) | godelski wrote: | I'm saying that people put Matrix/Element in competition | with Signal. These used to be dominating voices here. I | do think the Matrix == Slack and Signal == Text | philosophy has become more prominent now (the philosophy | I prescribe to). But there are also major discussions | about decentralization and users would suggest Matrix was | more secure because of that even though at the time group | chats were not encrypted (they are now) and E2EE was not | enabled by default. | | These are purely my observations of the discourse around | Signal and should not be taken as a universal truth. Only | my subjective reality. | | I'm not aware of any major vulnerabilities in Matrix (but | I'm not following) closely. I'm also not aware of any in | Signal, which I know is frequently audited. There is an | SGX attack, but it is often blown out of proportion | (highly technical attack that requires an unlocked phone | to be in the physical hands of the attacker). | cassonmars wrote: | Doing so comes at a cost to privacy -- by signal having a | hosting server, even if the contents are E2EE, retrieving | and storing these contents creates a metadata trail. I | actually go over these drawbacks and tradeoffs in a | recent blog post: | https://cassieheart.substack.com/p/notes-on-e2ee | anigbrowl wrote: | Who said anything about a hosting server? Why isn't there | a simple option to export a conversation to _local | storage_ , encrypted or unencrypted, along with a warning | that 'your conversation is now leaving the secure Signal | zone.' | cassonmars wrote: | For starters, signal retains a conversation for the | length of time you grant. That can be indefinite. The way | it is retained is in a local storage database. It is | intentionally guarded against export (although this is | somewhat unavoidable with backup features on phones), so | as to avoid companies like Cellebrite making it easy for | LE to overstep their bounds and pull the message database | when they take your phone. If you want some kind of | export interface, your best option is a screenshot -- | signal does not take any action that threatens the mutual | security between parties as explicitly agreed. | chopin wrote: | It's not only your conversation but the one of others | too. I like that it's hard to move it elsewhere. | daedalus_j wrote: | If you don't trust the other end then disappearing | messages should be used, simple. | | This is one of the problems with Signal having a bit of | confusion about what exactly it's use-case is. There are | plenty of cases where locking down the ability to | save/view/export messages are valuable, and Signal | provides tools to be able to do that. Making that the | mandatory case though means that it's harder to adopt as | a general-purpose communication platform. | | The need to decide if the goal is still to get as many | people off of SMS/facebook-messenger as possible, or if | the goal is to provide extreme security to dissidents and | protestors, or if they're going to spend the effort to be | able to do both effectively and let you choose which | conversations or messages get which level of protection. | dangus wrote: | How? I'm looking for a "delete all messages over X days | old" option. | | Not "delete all my chats/delete an entire thread." | jay3ss wrote: | On Android: | | Settings > Data and storage > Manage storage > Keep | messages | | then choose from the listed options | dangus wrote: | Unfortunately, the option isn't available on iOS, unless | it's hiding somewhere else. | daedalus_j wrote: | I'd take a decent "export my chats" option. I have chat | history that goes back years that it's often convenient to | be able to search. I'd love to be able to move it off the | device, but instead the Signal backup just keeps getting | larger and larger. | | To be clear, Signal allows you to backup and restore back | into Signal on android, which is great. What I meant is | that it would be helpful to be able to export that content | out of signal and keep an accessible searchable archive off | of the device. | godelski wrote: | > I have chat history that goes back years that it's | often convenient to be able to search. | | > but instead the Signal backup just keeps getting larger | and larger... | | One begets the other. | | > I'd love to be able to move it off the device | | If you don't want infinite history, set a conversation | length limit. It is in the storage settings. | | If you want to backup messages on iOS go complain | here[0]. For Android, you already have this ability. | | [0]https://community.signalusers.org/t/ios-backup- | keeping-messa... | anigbrowl wrote: | Being rude to people by dismissing feature requests as | invalid isn't helpful. | godelski wrote: | Sorry, I'm not trying to be rude. But I am confused at | what they want. We have continued the discussion and the | picture is clearer to me. Though I'm not sure exactly how | Signal can help with it. It still appears to me that the | user wants both reduced storage but to maintain search | history, which are at odds with one another. Unless they | expect Signal to store their history, which those | expectations should be shot down because that is against | their core philosophy. I did suggest a hack that might | fit their needs (full history on desktop but not phone). | anigbrowl wrote: | How can you be confused? | | 'I'd take a decent "export my chats" option' is a very | simple statement. There is no way within Signal to just | export a whole conversation to a file. | godelski wrote: | > There is no way within Signal to just export a whole | conversation to a file. | | You can on Android and Desktop. On Mac see | ~/Library/Application\ Support/Signal for your data. The | only issue is with iOS which I agree is an issue, but | does not seem to be the parent's issue. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | GP also said they want to be able to search their chat, | however, which I believe is the source of the confusion. | daedalus_j wrote: | If I set a conversation length limit though it prevents | my ability to search back through my history, which is | the feature I'd like to preserve. I value that history, | it's useful to me. | | My ideal solution would be to export any message older | than a month to an archive on my NAS, ideally in a format | that the app could search on request. Keep my history, | keep the on-device space nice and small. | | I take advantage of the Android backup feature, and the | backup syncs over to my NAS via SyncThing automatically, | but that's only useful for restoring a brand new phone up | to the latest state. | godelski wrote: | > My ideal solution would be to export any message older | than a month to an archive on my NAS | | I'm confused at what is stopping you from doing this? | | > ideally in a format that the app could search on | request. | | Are you not able to import these backups into the desktop | client? IIRC it is just reading from a file structure. I | don't see why a small script couldn't resolve this. | Obviously you wouldn't be able to search on your phone, | but you said you didn't want that data on your phone | anyways. If you did want to search on your phone from | your computer's storage, I think you're asking way too | much of them (and in danger of asking them to store data | for you, which they never will do). But this is hacker | news, and I don't see why you can't hack together that | tool in a weekend. Probably just a few beers on a Friday | is enough for it tbh. | [deleted] | daedalus_j wrote: | > I'm confused at what is stopping you from doing this? | | As far as I know the backup is encrypted. | | > Are you not able to import these backups into the | desktop client? | | No, the desktop client is not standalone, and ONLY syncs | with the a phone to get content. Moreover, if you don't | use the client for a period (2-3 weeks in my experience?) | it de-syncs that desktop client. Re-connecting that | desktop to your phone will only sync messages starting | as-of the connection, so there's no way to get the | desktop app to pull your whole history. (This is another | gripe I have about their sacrifice of actual usability | for security that only helps a few very specific use- | cases.) | | You're probably rigth about hacking something together. | Someone has created a library [0] allegedly for decoding | the backup files. Friday night is D&D night though, so I | haven't had the chance. :-) | | [0] https://github.com/pajowu/signal-backup-decode | andrepd wrote: | Precisely! So just give me an option to export my stuff to | a password-protected archive. Make me check a "yes I'm | fully aware that this means I am now responsible for the | security of this information" if you want. But Signal | doesn't let me do this. | anigbrowl wrote: | Except that they make it a pain in the ass to save the | stuff you want, because there isn't an easy 'export | conversation' function. You can archive conversations so | that old ones don't clutter up your chat list, but the only | thing you can do with an archived conversation is...un- | archive it. It has literally zero utility. | | Your only way of saving things is to either manually save | every picture and video, or manually highlight and copy the | text in your conversations. The latter defeats any security | arguments (other than of inconvenience) but also throws | away useful information like timestamps of messages. | | My Signal database takes up many GB on my phone, and it's | constantly complaining about running out of space. Much of | this is the years-long record of conversations with my | wife. I'd like to back these up, but I can't. Are you gonna | tell me that I shouldn't be using a secure messaging app to | communicate with my own family members? | ndsipa_pomu wrote: | The biggest issue I can see with using two separate apps is | checking who's on Signal and who isn't. That means opening up | Signal to see if they're on there and then switching to SMS if | they aren't. I much prefer having both types of contacts in the | same UI and it's been obvious to me which messages are secure. | Also, when someone then joins Signal, subsequent messages to | them automatically get upgraded to being secure with no effort | on my part. | CommitSyn wrote: | Yes... Unless it's able to somehow alert you that you're | texting someone with Signal, it seems like Signal will be | phased out because everyone will default to SMS, unless they | have a reason to use Signal for a conversation, which hurts | the entire privacy ecosystem. | Krasnol wrote: | ...and there I am here in Germany where nobody seems to use SMS | anymore. | | I couldn't care less about this. | codethief wrote: | > in Germany where nobody seems to use SMS anymore. | | That's not true at all. I assume that besides Signal you use | WhatsApp, though? | Krasnol wrote: | I haven't met a single person using SMS for so long that I | can't even remember the phone I had last time I used it. I | do work with a lot different contractors. | | And yes, WhatsApp is prevalent here. | tannhaeuser wrote: | You're saying this as if it were preferable to give all | your contacts and metadata to WhatsApp/Facebook. | groestl wrote: | Didn't even realize there was SMS built into Signal (apart | from the "Invite via SMS" screen once in a while). | jhoechtl wrote: | Austrians don't care too. | | I can't understand who and why anyone cares about SMS these | day, besides receiving government emergency notifications. | maratc wrote: | Phone-based 2FA hasn't got to Austria yet? | dopa42365 wrote: | Most sites and platforms use HOTP/TOTP (RFC 4226/RFC | 6238) for 2FA, use an authenticator app of your choice. | | Regardless of that, you can still always receive SMS for | the 3 outdated services that still use it. | Krasnol wrote: | Phone-based 2FA isn't really the problem here no? | | I don't even open the SMS program if I get a code. I type | it from the notification area. I certainly don't have to | answer to it. | berndinox wrote: | Not via SMS, anymore | godelski wrote: | > I have repeatedly been unable to convince iOS users to use | Signal because "I don't want another app". | | Here's how I've convinced my iPhone friends. I tell them if | they actually want to send pictures and videos to me that | aren't potato quality they can either switch to an Android, | email me, or use Signal. At this point Signal is more like a | cross platform iMessage. This tends to move people over because | Apple's walled garden makes group chats infeasible with mixed | devices. | fsflover wrote: | Signal is another walled garden, where you have no say in | their decisions and simply must obey or leave. Consider | Matrix if you want to have the freedom. | iudqnolq wrote: | The only reason this isn't a dealbreaker for me is because | their sms implementation was so buggy and feature-poor that I | would never have used it. | | (The only reason I use signal is to talk to my girlfriend. The | only reason we use it is early in our relationship I was going | through a phase where I adopted annoying privacy tools. I | wanted to abandon it, but after years of using it she's | developed positive emotional associations between our | relationship and signal, so for non-technical reasons she likes | to keep using it just to talk to me) | CommitSyn wrote: | Yes, this is an idiotic decision that makes me question the | decisions being made as a whole by Signal. | | Does anyone have recommendations for a good default SMS app on | Android? | rtcoms wrote: | SMS Organizer by Microsoft | | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.. | .. | whoibrar wrote: | Been using this for years, I really like the Updates and | finances tab. | | https://i.imgur.com/hUABKGr.jpg | DesiLurker wrote: | _shudder_ | Markoff wrote: | Pulse SMS is really good, but I blacklisted updates since | they were bought in 2020 | | https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/10/29/it-looks-like- | pulse... | | QKsms is open source but abandoned more than a year, so I | guess Simple SMS at Fdroid should be ok, it's from the guy | behind Simple Gallery | wslack wrote: | The provide a fairly clear rationale beyond the ideological | concern: users don't know/see who is on SMS and who isn't, | and are being hit with high fees, and they are concerned that | users may believe they have privacy when they do not. | | These are reasonable issues and concerns, so I don't follow | why you would question all of the other decisions they make. | rodgerd wrote: | If only there were a company that had, at some point, | demonstrated that you can use indicators such as colour to | indicate to users whether their messages were being | transported via SMS or an E2E secure transport layer. | | I guess that's just a pipe dream though. | roer wrote: | There are surely ways around this that don't limit the | functionality of the application | dylan604 wrote: | As if Signal couldn't change the color of the text | bubbles to some shade of, let's just say, green, to | indicate when a user is chatting via SMS instead of a | Signal secured message. | maratc wrote: | And then everybody and their dog would accuse them of | green-shaming or whatever. | dylan604 wrote: | No such thing as bad PR, unless you're removing features. | Having people green-shame just means there are other | people that are rolling their eyes and still getting | their name out there. | busymom0 wrote: | Couldn't they just do something like have the sms messages | in a different color than the rest? Similar to how iOS used | blue for iMessage and green for texts? Signal could use an | annoying red color for sms to make it even more clear. | aidenn0 wrote: | Not sure if this is a joke given that Signal uses Blue | for sms and Red for encrypted... | busymom0 wrote: | I am on iOS and have never seen red. Only see blue. Color | can be customized though. | aidenn0 wrote: | I didn't specifically sate "on Android" since on iOS all | messages are through Signal. | nh2 wrote: | > users don't know/see who is on SMS and who isn't | | They could just show the literal word "SMS" in the send | button. | | I think that would be more obvious than wha they do now | (button being grey instead of blue with a minimally changed | lock symbol [1]). | | [1]: https://support.signal.org/hc/en- | us/articles/360007318911#an... | Markoff wrote: | so put SMS in different tab and let users turn on/off this | feature in settings, done, problem solved, but I understand | giving users options nowadays ain't trendy | autoexec wrote: | Silence is like a less polished version of Signal. The only | important feature I really think it's lacking is a search | function. You can export your texts to an XML file though, so | to find something from a long time ago I just export to a | file and use grep to search through that. | evandale wrote: | I've been using Chomp SMS a long time and it's still being | updated. | cannam wrote: | Yeah, I like Chomp. As I recall, I first installed it | because it had an optional emoji pack with the old blob | emojis in it, which I was miffed to have had taken away | from me in an Android update. | neogodless wrote: | Posted elsewhere in this thread but... | | Personally like TextraSMS. Has a free ad-supported version, | but I paid to remove ads when it was on sale several years | ago (maybe $1). | | 4.4 stars. I believe it's $3 or $5 to remove ads now. | | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.textra | | Also surprised me the other day when a friend used an iOS | reaction, and it applied it correctly on my end. | | > Added support for Reactions (also known as Tapbacks) | received from iOS Apple devices. | davchana wrote: | I am also using it on both devices, and I also paid for it | using Google Opinion Credits :) Textra is an amazing SMS | app. | genpfault wrote: | https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.simplemobiletools.smsmes. | .. ? | Stamp01 wrote: | This is what I'm switching to. I would have suggested | Textra, but when I downloaded it just now, TrackerControl | told me there are a bunch of tracking libraries in it. | Simple SMS Messenger, on the other hand, not only doesn't | have any tracking libraries, but doesn't ask for internet | access! | | I've used other tools in the Simple suite and I love them. | | Although I like using F-Droid, this app is also available | on the regular Play Store as well. | nazgulsenpai wrote: | I've been using QKSMS on Android 12 and haven't had any | problems in about a year of use. I think its on Google Play | as well. | | https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=com.moez.QKSMS | _-david-_ wrote: | Last commit was a year ago. Do you know if it is still | being developed? | daedalus_j wrote: | Doesn't look good... | https://github.com/moezbhatti/qksms/issues/1881 | nazgulsenpai wrote: | I'm not sure, but I haven't had any issues or want any | more features than it already has so it's not an problem | for me, but might be for some. | jmcphers wrote: | The Google Messages app is pretty good. It's a little thing, | but it's the only app that supports tapbacks from iOS -- so | on the (many) group threads I'm on that have iPhone users, I | can see loves/like reactions instead of a flood of texts that | say "Jane Doe loved an image". | LtWorf wrote: | It's terrible. Every once in a while they decide to | convince me that I really don't want to be sending an SMS | but I want to use google's messenger of the month, that | will inevitably be gone next month. | gs17 wrote: | Huh, it's never done that to me. How often does it | happen? | aidenn0 wrote: | Every time it updates it asks me if I want to enable | "messaging features" the next time it opens. | LtWorf wrote: | Used to happen to push duo. I installed an sms app from | fdroid after that. | metamet wrote: | I also use the "messages for web" sync that Google Messages | offer: https://messages.google.com/web/ | | Really convenient to be able to respond to texts without | having to take out my phone. | MAGZine wrote: | +1 google messages. | | rcs support works well, the emoji reactions are good. the | web ui for it is pretty alright. I use the quick responses | and scheduled send from time to time. and it cleans up my | 2fa codes automatically. | | Also, it now sends emoji reactions over sms which is a nice | little graceful degredation from sms. | S201 wrote: | This is an idiotic decision. There are real issues around | improving the UX for making it more clear when a message was sent | as SMS instead of being encrypted and dealing with the problem of | undelivered messages because the recipient uninstalled the app, | but to drop SMS support entirely instead of improving those pain | points? Terrible, terrible decision. | ecuaflo wrote: | im surprised by all the tech readers here saying this is bad. do | y'all not care about privacy? the main reason is sms compromises | that | omgmajk wrote: | This is sooo bad. It doesn't matter what reason they give, this | is the only reason I can get some people to use Signal and it's | the main reason I found it interesting in the first place. | forgotmypw17 wrote: | This is the type of occurrence which leads me to refer to most | user-service relationships as non-consensual. | | The user enters the relationship consensually, but the choices | about the service's operations are done without the user's | consent. | | In this case, the user's only choices are to either abandon the | service, or to put up with the changes they did not consent to. | | In the future, with data portability being common and table | stakes for most services, I think there will be a third option: | seamless transition to a different service, preserving all data, | metadata, relationships, and user accounts. | | This is already possible with existing, established technology: | private keys, hashing, and text files. | | We have a bright future to look forward to, where this type of | change will be perceived as old-fashioned and barbaric as surgery | without anesthetic. | Ninjinka wrote: | This is beyond stupid. This is the only way I was able to | convince friends to use Signal. Heck, it's one of the only | reasons I used it myself. Didn't have to juggle two apps. | dark_glass wrote: | This change will have fewer people use Signal. One reason I was | able to convince friends and family to start using it is because | it is so seamless. I fear that with this change, Signal for most | users will simply become unused, resulting in less e2e encrypted | messaging overall. | KingOfCoders wrote: | Why oh why do you want to drive me away? Signal was and is the | only messenger I use (one exception: WA with my mom). | | First this wallet thing, now no SMS? Why not try to figure out a | way to use encrypted SMS? | crimsoneer wrote: | This seems very silly, and will probably lead to me dropping | signal? | joemazerino wrote: | I do not like this decision. Using Signal as a main SMS provider | makes it easier for me to collect all of my messages in one | place. Now I have to, YET AGAIN, download an SMS app for use | while keeping Signal active. | | I'm glad privacy is becoming mainstream but dislike lowering the | bar for adoption to where it profoundly affects users. | calvinmorrison wrote: | It makes me yearn for the days with Pidgin where I had IRC, | Google Chat (XMPP back then), AOL and whatever else chat | protocols all running through the same client. | | That's what is nice about signals implementation is it stands. | It supports acting as the SMS default app on android and | defaults to signal when it can. | LinuxBender wrote: | One thing I liked about those multi-protocol clients is that | some of them supported the OTR libraries for E2EE encrypted | messages regardless of platform used. A couple of the | implementations would automatically handshake with others to | see if they supported OTR. | lapinot wrote: | > That's what is nice about signals implementation is it | stands. | | Sure they handle SMS, but the real problem here is that | Signal is just another walled garden: they have an overtly | negative stance towards alternative clients, while also | having very bad support for anything besides android/ios: | they have a bad desktop client and they don't have a nice | library. Altogether this means that Signal is overtly and | willingly against things like Pidgin / multi-protocol clients | or overlay, which is _what the users want_ (ie not caring | about protocols). | | Signal doesn't want to deal with SMS anymore, which from an | engineering and high-stakes security pov is a completely | valid decision. Yet if it had clean and open local API or a | simple and portable client library, or had a stable server | API, then someone else could provide multi-protocol clients, | tailored to each platform in a secure and stable way. | erohead wrote: | This is why we are building https://www.beeper.com | codethief wrote: | FYI Part of your website is broken on Firefox for Android. | (Broken layout, content not shown etc.) | | Now to my actual question: How is Beeper compatible with | the ToS of platforms like Instagram and Facebook that, to | my knowledge, don't allow their users to use 3rd-party | apps? Case in point: I recently wanted to use a FOSS 3rd- | party messaging app for Instagram and my account got | promptly banned. | | Question 2: Do you support full message backups in a well- | documented format? | fyvhbhn wrote: | I doubt your phone doesn't have a default sms app. | | Anyways e2ee and sms doesn't mix well | throwawayben wrote: | The comments here are so bizarre to me. I think this must be a | USA thing. | | I had no idea signal even supported SMS, nor do I know anybody | who uses SMS | endorphine wrote: | Same here. I also considered this being a US-only thing. I | couldn't care less about SMS. | | In fact, I hope getting rid of SMS support adds some capacity | to the team for features/fixes I care the most about. | Symbiote wrote: | I don't send many SMSs, but I receive them: package delivery | notifications, automatic appointment reminders, a message to | say my car has been repaired, 2FA codes. | | I found it useful to have all these messages in a single place, | although this change probably won't inconvenience me too much. | However, I don't see any benefit. | guerrilla wrote: | SMS is used heavily by companies in Sweden too, for pretty much | all notifications and often chat too. This is going to be a | pain in the ass. | Kiro wrote: | Where do you live where people do not use SMS? In most | countries I've been to and lived in in Europe SMS was very much | used. | keb_ wrote: | It is a US thing. The majority of folks in the US still use SMS | for text chat. The alternative is buying into a proprietary | platform like WhatsApp, but not _everyone_ you talk to is going | to be on WhatsApp /FB Messenger/iMessage, etc, so you end up | having 5 different chat apps installed on your phone at any | time. SMS has been the only real ubiquitous one despite all its | flaws. | roer wrote: | I don't live in the US, and SMS support has been essential in | convincing people from my parents' generation to give signal a | try. I personally also like not ever having to open my phone's | stock message app when I once in a while _do_ get an SMS | subarctic wrote: | mercacona wrote: | Signal developer giving some extra context to the news: | | https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms... | | > So I guess the TL;DR is: SMS is on it's way out in general, and | in a world where Signal supports SMS, all of SMS's shortcomings | are often attributed to Signal itself, all while confusing people | into thinking their SMS's are secure. | lucideer wrote: | This is bizarre. | | If this were an in-depth announcement with a long and well- | structured technical justification attached, I could understand. | Though I suspect I'd likely disagree with the decision, I could | probably accept it as a simple different of opinion if the | arguments were evidently well-thought-through and considered. | | This blog-post is so lightweight. There's no technical analysis. | There's barely any justification. Yes we know SMS is insecure and | yes - it seems plainly obvious that having them in the same UI | could pose UX challenges & user confusion issues. So improve the | UX and clarify the distinction. Did anyone in Signal consider the | userbase or the advantages of this feature at all? | | Definitely the end of my Signal usage anyway. It's my main SMS | app: my primary motivator is SMS UX, the ability to securely | message a tiny subset of my friends is a very nice but ultimately | non-vital bonus. Having a separate app for those people isn't | worth my while (they're on other platforms I use more). | | The migration off it will be an unwelcome pain... | rlpb wrote: | > Definitely the end of my Signal usage anyway. It's my main | SMS app: my primary motivator is SMS UX, the ability to | securely message a tiny subset of my friends is a very nice but | ultimately non-vital bonus. | | I think this is the crux of it. Your primary motivator may be | for a better SMS UX. But Signal's primary motivator is to | provide universal secure messaging, but your typical use of | Signal doesn't do that. So it's no surprise that their plans | mismatch your expectations. | lucideer wrote: | > _your typical use of Signal doesn 't do that_ | | All centralised & protocol-locked messaging apps are subject | to network effect. People moving away from Signal doesn't | help the goal of universal secure messaging, regardless of | whether those people are you or I. | | That said, it seems they're between a rock & a hard place | here since Google are defacto deprecating support for 3rd- | party SMS apps. | [deleted] | dodgerdan wrote: | Improving UI/UX around to clarify the SMS function is insecure | is almost impossible. Google did research around SSL cert | warnings a few years back, their conclusion was that people | don't read and just dismiss warnings, no mater what UI was. A | frightening percentage of people also think the security | padlock icon is actually a handbag. | | Most people simply lack the technical basis to understand the | security implications of sms. And for Signal to be a secure | messaging system by default SMS needs to be removed. | lucideer wrote: | The only similarity between these two UX scenarios is that | they involve encrypted network protocols. From a user | standpoint there's no similarities. | | Firstly, the messaging decision is presented to the user | before an action (send SMS/Signal). It's capable of blocking | and takes place as part of an active use flow where the user | is trying to complete a task. With browsers, the | differentiation in UI is displayed after a user action. It | doesn't block and the user doesn't require interaction to | achieve any goal. Why on earth should they pay any attention | to it? | | Secondly, the UX for messaging is an equivalent paths binary | decision: you're asking people to choose A or B. There isn't | an inherent default so a user doesn't start out with a bias | toward one or the other. They can easily be required to read | to proceed. | | With browsers it's a yes/no binary decision: the default | (yes) is insecure (for an insecure website). It requires no | action from the user. The secure option (no, leave) asks the | user to do something. It's a choice between inaction | (insecure) or action (secure). That's heavily stacked. | | Lastly, even the context surrounding the apps themselves is | incomparably different. One is a security upgrade of an | application everyone's been using for decades (often | unknowingly; "the icon for the internet"). The other is an | app people consciously download and install explicitly for | security reasons (regardless of whether they understand those | security reasons it's at least the motivating factor). | thomastjeffery wrote: | That's assuming a lot of context. Your talking about a tiny | icon next to the address bar in a browser. Of course people | didn't always know what that was! | | Signal's primary feature is encrypted messaging. You don't | get it without at least seeing the word "encrypted" | somewhere. | dodgerdan wrote: | Counter point most people think Telegram is e2ee secure | messaging, but Telegram never said they were. | thomastjeffery wrote: | And that doesn't get clarified by UI that distinguishes | between encrypted messages and SMS, because Telegram | doesn't have such a thing to distinguish between. | | My point is that all of this is orthogonal to whether | _Signal_ can successfully make UI show users when they | are sending encrypted messages vs unencrypted SMS. | | Most of the confusion you are citing is about whether an | app does encryption or not, and that is a totally | distinct problem domain. | dodgerdan wrote: | You've failed to make a distinction between e2e | encryption and TLS encryption, how do you explain that in | UI? | krater23 wrote: | The people you talk about see no sense to use signal at all. | So why should they install it when they have SMS? And when | Signal is installed, why should the change the app and use | signal instead of SMS? | neogodless wrote: | Here's a (partially?) non-technical justification they shared | on the Community forums. | | https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms... | 1MachineElf wrote: | Thanks. This link should really be higher up in the comments. | The community forums discussion is much more interesting than | the blog post. | lucideer wrote: | That post is an excellent justification. Makes perfect sense | and it's hard to find fault with it. | | Wonder why the blog post omitted all of that and focused on | nonsense instead? | fluidcruft wrote: | Yeah, I 100% agree with you about that and the more I've | been digesting that explanation, the more I see why this is | the correct thing to do. | | Hopefully this even frees them to do things we've wanted | for a long time... like not being tied to a phone number | and offering better features than RCS/iMessage. Maybe even | having multiple independent profiles/pseudonyms for | compartmentalization. | | That's how Signal could be growing the base and interop | with SMS/MMS/RCS cruft on one platform will always lack the | killer feature and be irrelevant to the other platforms. If | Signal were better than SMS/RCS/iMessage people will just | use it for those reasons in addition to the security and | privacy. | | And having just installed the beta and used the SMS export | and allowed it to purge all of SMS content from Signal into | Google Messages it actually sort of is nice that the app is | now ONLY the "Signal" context. I'm... actually pretty okay | with SMS belonging to the "Stuff that Creepy Companies Like | Google Know" context. | | Basically this just does what Signal already does in iOS: | it must compete with the native messaging client. Google is | already playing RCS as SMS upgrade and Signal is making the | correct strategic decision to not make a play for RCS. SMS | support is just going to lead to whining about lack of RCS. | The bottom line is both Apple and Google are out to kill | SMS. With SMS gone, Signal can just move on to feature | parity with iMessage and beyond while leapfrogging whatever | messaging clusterfuck Google keeps producing. Google can | have SMS for all I care. We can't have iMessage on Android, | but we can have Signal on both Android and iOS. | g_sch wrote: | What kind of technical analysis would you be looking for? | Reading the post, it seems like their analysis came down to (1) | fundamental values, i.e. not including insecure communications | within an app when they've built their brand around being | secure, and (2) UX confusion resulting in additional SMS costs | and/or inadvertent data leakage. The former is a | straightforward question of product strategy. Are you looking | for e.g. some numbers from their UX research? This doesn't seem | to ultimately be a decision about underlying technology. | fluidcruft wrote: | I guess to be fair it lets them design and support a single UX | since iOS doesn't allow them to have SMS in the UX. That could | have been a good argument. | | Of course, they didn't bother make that argument. | | And in the SMS domain Google Messages really does get annoying | with the whole Google Messages vs iMessage and how nothing | Google is doing with RCS benefits anyone except Google. As | Google continues its war on SMS and force migration of everyone | to RCS, Signal users on Android end up being the red-headed | step child. That also is a good technical/strategic argument | for ditching SMS. | | But, again, not one that they even bothered make. | | And there's always been the "tied to a phone number" issue | that's been the #1 complaint about Signal. And once untethered | from SMS who cares about phone numbers anymore. | | Once again, not even a case they bothered to make. | agloeregrets wrote: | The answer is this: They dont want to add RCS support or spend | the time to do it. It's all bullshit top to bottom. | Melatonic wrote: | Google also restricts their specific flavor of RCS (or at | least they did awhile ago). I wanted to keep using Textra SMS | but they never let Textra into RCS land. | lucideer wrote: | If they said that up top I think many more people would be | accepting of it. | greysonp wrote: | There are no public RCS API's. No one (besides an OEM) can | make an RCS app. | ajvs wrote: | Google doesn't _allow_ 3rd-party apps to access the RCS API. | rsync wrote: | "The answer is this: They dont want to add RCS support or | spend the time to do it." | | ... confirmed by Signal in their discussion thread: | | "... and Signal can't add RCS support because there's no RCS | API on Android. Honestly, the days of any third-party SMS app | are numbered." | | I guess I misunderstood RCS. I thought _the whole point_ of | RCS was to be used on Android and to allow disparate third | parties to use it as an open standard. | | Where is the RCS API if not on Android ? Who is supposed to | use RCS ? | veeti wrote: | The API is private to system apps from the device | manufacturer. Most phones ship Google's Messages app for | SMS & RCS. | brewdad wrote: | SMS support is literally how I got my family to switch to Signal | in the first place. None of the non-techies want to switch apps | or have to send the same message out multiple times in order to | reach their friends and family. Having an app that provides | privacy when able and still works for those not yet onboard was a | godsend. | black_puppydog wrote: | Oh no! | | I can see how this is a hassle to maintain though; just for | example, my Huawei consistently resets the default sms app to the | crappy stock one every time I use their "ultra battery saver | mode" (which I otherwise like a lot) even though I explicitly | included signal in the list of apps that are allowed to run in | that mode. | | So I can see how the ecosystem makes this an annoying feature... | londons_explore wrote: | I think the real rationale for this change is signal believes | this will push user adoption. | | If User A (who uses the signal app) regularly communicates with | User B (who doesn't), then this change might encourage User A to | ask User B to join signal. It makes a stronger network effect, | and will increase viral growth. | | However, I think the Signal team is misguided, and in fact they | will just lose users who don't want one more app to manage. | richbell wrote: | > If User A (who uses the signal app) regularly communicates | with User B (who doesn't), then this change might encourage | User A to ask User B to join signal. It makes a stronger | network effect, and will increase viral growth. | | Conversely, the inconvenience of having multiple messaging apps | could cause User A to stop using Signal. Look at what happened | with Hangouts when they dropped SMS support. | nilespotter wrote: | Hi, I'm User A! | somehnacct3757 wrote: | I switched years ago figuring it's just like my SMS app but | sometimes I'll have more secure convos with other adopters. | There was no buy-in cost. | | Now that it's just some random chat app with its own protocol I | could not be more allergic to their brand. | | Hopefully they didn't need my user type for their flywheel. | gerty wrote: | I've been a user for nearly 10 years and still only a few people | in my circles uses Signal. If they go through with this, Signal | is as good as dead. | dodgerdan wrote: | Well for what it's worth it sounds like you weren't really | using Signal for secure messaging anyway... so not much of a | loss. | roer wrote: | Well, isn't the point that more people using signal | strengthens the privacy/security of everyone? I would be sad | if I wanted to send a message to gerty, and I find out he | stopped using signal because of this. | | It's not like I wouldn't still want to message him, right? | | Convenience is extremely powerful in getting the layman to | adopt this kind of tech, and I feel like it should be | prioritized. | Xelynega wrote: | This kind of thinking is exactly what's killing signal. Why | would you want to gatekeep the security of others instead of | making t as accessible as possible? | | To me this feels like signal not understanding that their | intended userbase and their actual userbase are very | different, as I can't imagine the number of people that use | signal solely for it's e2ee is comparable to the number of | people that use it as their sms app. | dodgerdan wrote: | "Killing Signal"? They don't publish their user numbers, | but they were having outages due to massive user growth a | few years ago. | guerrilla wrote: | That was when hundreds of thousabds of peopld abandoned | WhatsApp, shi h us what will happen to Signal if they do | this. | DGAP wrote: | OK, then I'm going to stop using Signal after 6 years of use. | alvarezbjm-hn wrote: | Privacy being the primary goal of the app, they should remove the | phone as username tenet. This is almost as bad as it can get for | privacy, e2ee or not. | | "We have now reached the point where SMS support no longer makes | sense." | | They should have let the users decide that | neilv wrote: | It'll be interesting to see how their user numbers change. | | (How many current users will it drive away? Or cause to use | Signal less than before?) | | (How many new users will Signal acquire, because adoption network | effects weren't working as well as possible, when messaging with | non-Signal friends was too convenient, but now Signal users are | more motivated to prod their non-Signal friends towards Signal?) | | And who's going to pick up the users that Signal loses? | roer wrote: | How can I best send my feedback to the signal team about this? | | Is it feasible to fork the app? | alexnewman wrote: | Amazing decision signal. I always hated this combination as it | confused me constantly. I've been coding for 30 years and I'm a | published author in security... and it still confused me. | dig1 wrote: | > We have now reached the point where SMS support no longer makes | sense | | > ... | | > Now, data plans are cheaper and far more ubiquitous than they | were nearly a decade ago | | I'm curious, are these guys lives in a bubble or what? I think | they should try to travel around the world a bit. | | > we've heard repeatedly from people who've been hit with high | messaging fees after assuming that the SMS messages they were | sending were Signal messages, only to find out that they were | using SMS, and being charged by their telecom provider. | | So in essence, they fuc*d up UI/UX and now the simplest approach | to fix would be just to remove it. Sounds like a brilliant idea | from an MBA guy or whatever-evangelist-title-is. | Markoff wrote: | hahaha, that was literally the only reason why at least consider | signal over other IM, now they lost it they have literally zero | benefit over Element or Telegram since you will need dedicated | SMS app in phone anyway | | personally I jumped the boat when they made app unusable with PIN | code nag screen, which they backpedaled from after uproar but it | was already too late for me and my extended family where I pushed | Signal, there were message delivery issues, horrible downtime in | Europe because US admin was taking sleep, but the unavoidable nag | screen was the last drop, the later news about shady crypto and | other stuff just convinced me this app ain't worth a dime, which | this SMS announcement just confirmed | | if you wanna alternative IM app use Element (Matrix), unlike | Signal it doesn't require phone number, it use decentralized | network and you can choose from whatever app you like, never | understood why IT skilled people pushed Signal after Element | became already quite user friendly | jeroenhd wrote: | I like the Signal app for my SMS messages. Almost nobody I | regularly talk to uses Signal so I mostly use it for this | purpose. I might as well remove it and get rid of yet another app | listening for cloud notifications and draining my battery. | | Maybe I'll grab the source code, rip out all the Signal parts, | and just use that. | alrs wrote: | What dicks. I'm not looking forward to playing tech support for | all the non-technical people I convinced to use Signal. Thanks | for confirming everyone's suspicions about my weird-nerd chat | client. | plsbenice34 wrote: | Exactly my reaction, made me feel sick | MonkeyMalarky wrote: | This is extremely frustrating and lowers the chances of me ever | adopting a similar non-default texting app again. This will hurt | Signal and as well as poison the well for future developers. | progman32 wrote: | Glad I was immediately suspicious of the sms feature and decided | to not use it. Seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I'm a big | fan of compartmentalization when it comes to closed ecosystems. | This change won't affect me or my sms chat history. | red_trumpet wrote: | > [W]e [...] grew from a small project to the most widely used | private messaging service on the planet. | | Really? More used than WhatsApp, Telegram or iMessage? | 0xJRS wrote: | RIP Signal | alexb_ wrote: | I hope that the signal devs are looking at this thread and | seriously considering reversing this horrendous decision. Just | announcing this was a horrible idea, but you can at least salvage | it by formally retracting it. Getting rid of SMS support would | immediately and swiftly kill the app. I use Signal for the sole | reason of having a secure messaging app _that works with SMS_. If | you get rid of SMS support, you immediately kill the app. This is | quite possibly the worst decision you could possibly make. | newfonewhodis wrote: | This is terrible. Most of my social network is not yet on Signal, | but using a single app for all my communication makes my life so | much easier. Signal was always promised as the one-app that | everyone could use even if their network was not using Signal. | | Is anyone NOT inside Signal happy about this decision? Please | comment if so, and why. | scatters wrote: | The people in my network who aren't using Signal are on | WhatsApp or Telegram, and Signal can't handle those. But then, | I live in Europe. | yazboo wrote: | This is really going to mess with some highly stressed out, low | digital literacy people in my life. I guess I'll need to help | them move to something else - is there any other basic SMS app on | Android that a) looks like it's from a legitimate developer, and | b) doesn't skim your message content for ad personalization? | hypeatei wrote: | Wow, I use this feature so I only have one messaging app to worry | about. | | It was seamless and I didn't see much of an issue with it. | | I guess Signal is going to become that app that is only opened | once a month or so. No more donations from me. | ghastmaster wrote: | > After much discussion, we determined that we can no longer | continue to invest in accommodating SMS in the Android app while | also dedicating the resources we need to make Signal the best | messenger out there. | | I did not need emoji's, groups, gifs and all the other neat stuff | that signal has introduced throughout the years(to varying | degrees of success). I had been using it, while none of my | friends were. What I did need was a single messenger to handle | sms/mms with the default being secure when security was | available. I have multiple friends now using it and sadly will | revert back to a 100% insecure messenger for my phone for 99% of | my messages. The new one will do everything better than signal | does except security, so it will have some benefits. | | I will be on the lookout for a replacement. I hope signal | continues to bring security for entities that need it through the | future. I have not looked at tox in a while. I'll check that out | again. | Kapura wrote: | this is effectively going to remove signal as my messaging app of | choice. i understand that messages that are not signal messages | are not secure, but it is not going to be possible to convince | anybody i know to download a special app if they want to talk to | me. they will just send SMS, and I will have to respond via SMS, | and it wont involve the signal app. | | i hope they reconsider this decision; i have been using the | product since textsecure and I would hate to stop doing so | because they no longer support out-of-network communication. | alpaca128 wrote: | Am I the only one who likes this change? | | I'm tired of explaining to my relatives why they can send their | picture to one person but not to another, or why it requires wifi | for some contacts. Mixing two incompatible messaging standards | communicating via two different channels in one app is confusing | for many people. Sure, it also has advantages and I think you | could make it work, but the app actively asking users to make it | the default SMS app is not a great idea. | Flimm wrote: | I read the blog post with delight. I have been waiting for this | change for a long time. I opened HN comments to join in what I | thought would be a celebration, and I was surprised to find | dismay. It never occurred to me to encourage my friends to use | Signal for its SMS compatibility, (which isn't even supported | on iOS). The whole advantage of Signal is its security, and I | hated having to recommend an app that is secure, except when | it's not. | AdmiralAsshat wrote: | I'm surprised at how much backlash there is to this. | | I've had Signal since shortly after it renamed itself from | TextSecure to Signal, and I never bothered using it as the | default SMS/Messaging app, because back then it was a _bad_ SMS | app. It felt like it paled in comparison to what the default | Android Messages app could do. I didn 't want to get the false | impression, either, that my chats were encrypted when they really | weren't, just because they shows up in Signal. | | So I kept the two separate. I assumed pretty much everyone else | did the same. And yeah, there's the occasional oddity when | someone texts me over SMS instead of using Signal when I know for | a fact that they have both, but most of the people doing it are | using iPhones, so I have to assume it's the same experience for | them as well. | johnchristopher wrote: | Same. | | What's weird is that in the numerous Matrix vs Signal comments | that populate Signal and Matrix submissions you rarely find SMS | support as an Signal advantage over Element/Matrix. | | Most people I know didn't like Signal taking over the SMS when | they accidentally opted in. | endorphine wrote: | Same here. I'm really surprised by the reactions, but I guess | it's a locality thing. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-12 23:00 UTC)