People hoping to get randomly added to war chats lol
Signal downloads spike in the US and Yemen amid government scandal | TechCrunch
Submitted 3 weeks ago by JOMusic@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
ubergeek@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
doug@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
i’m more curious about getting on their venmo friend list.
“hey, it’s uh, vlad. i need 200k for the um, rigging of the midterms in uh, wisconsin. thank you.”
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Just send like a request for a few thousand dollars and put the description entirely I’m Russian lol
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I would ruin it by posting my balls immediately
Crackhappy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Good. It’s the only encrypted channel I trust right now.
52fighters@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
I’d consider using them if I didn’t need to use a phone number to register. My friends and family stick with Briar as a result.
Ulrich@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Hey man, if you can convince anyone to use Briar, do that. I have better luck getting people to use Signal because it’s way more popular and easier to sign up. And if I want to know if someone uses it, I can find out instantly.
philpo@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Matrix is also an option and heavily audited+ federated. And unlike Signal not based in the US.
And the best? You can easily selfhost a bridge to signal and WhatsApp.
renzev@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
How well do the signal and whatsapp bridges work? Have you used them yourself? I tried setting up a discord bridge years ago and it was terrible. Is it better now?
Pandantic@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Everyone hoping to get accidentally added to a government group chat.
soyboy77@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Bad actors are sowing distrust by implying that Signal is not secure. Always remember that the powers that be don’t want the public to have encrypted comms.
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
You have to be very tinfoil hat to believe that this current administration is capable of anything so sophisticated as a misdirection.
renzev@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There are many things you can complain about when it comes to signal, but overall it’s a huge improvement from unencrypted messengers like discord and definitely a
stepleap in the right directionrottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Bad actors are sowing distrust by implying that Signal is not secure. Always remember that the powers that be don’t want the public to have encrypted comms and would love to ban private messaging apps altogether.
Wrong logic, trying to guess what they are doing. I mean, if you were a god-level poker player, then maybe, but most people are not and god-level players lose too.
and Signal is in fact a fed honeypot
Being competitive and protected from network effects (decentralized, p2p, federation, one standard and many implementations, all that) can hurt being secure. The complexity of being both may not be practical.
The point of Signal is academic level security. It has a clear model and is not doing anything to make it more complex.
Which is why it is centralized, leading to suspicions and accusations of being a honeypot.
The code is open-source though, and I’m hoping that individuals more learned than I would surely alert us if there were any backdoors/exploits…
That’s a wrong hope in any case.
ililiililiililiilili@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
It just about always comes down to user error. The White House trusting Signal is very indicative of the effectiveness of the app’s underlying protocols and the organization’s commitment to privacy. This is definitely huge publicity and I hope Signal endures the limelight.
Prox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
LOL what kinda bullshit comment is this?
The people in the White House are idiots. They choose Signal because they’re either dumb/negligent -or- because they have been intentionally avoiding record preservation requirements.
Signal is a solid app for sure, but there dipshits didn’t choose it for being the right tool for the job here, as it certainly is not.
Ulrich@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
-or- because they have been intentionally avoiding record preservation requirements.
It’s this one
dipshits didn’t choose it for being the right tool for the job here, as it certainly is not.
It was, actually. If they weren’t dipshits it wouldn’t have been a problem.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
It’s not the right tool for their job but still a good tool for the laws they were trying to break…
ililiililiililiilili@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I wholeheartedly agree the White House is full of morons. I was just saying that Signal is a solid app to me to securely share bullshit with my family. Its definitely not the right tool for government officials to use. But its plenty safe for sharing memes and pics of my dog.
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
The white house trusting signal is nice, but using it to circumvent official communication tools which document messages for the archives is not the way it should be used - they used the “disappearing messages”-feature as well. This usage is more in line with criminal organizations like the mafia or yakuza.
wewbull@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
I believe some people have been ordered to archive the chat so that it can be presented to Congress in the future. Trouble is, looking at the screenshots it’s already gone as they had the message lifetime set to a week.
I wonder if this will be seen as destroying evidence .
ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
So who exactly is downloading the app as a result of this latest government scandal? I’m going to guess it’s the maga crowd because they are this as an endorsement from their new king. But hopefully I’m wrong and it’s a broad sweep of different users from across the political spectrum.
absquatulate@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Why should it matter if the new users are all magas or not?
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You wouldn’t want the Signal brand to become linked to it.
“I’m on Signal, would you like to chat there?”
“What, on the MAGA Nazi app, are you joking? Of course I’m not talking to you there”
mholiv@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It matters though. Like in Germany telegram is associated with hard right wings groups. Telling someone you use telegram makes them assume that you are a part of hard right ideologies.
It’s a shame as the telegram app is really snappy. You always have to say that you are on telegram but are not right wing. Even the. People can be suspicious.
diffusive@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The chat space is problematic.
- There are a lot of apps that don’t encrypt at all (e.g. Google chat, discord, etc)
- There are apps that encrypt but they are subject to jurisdictions that can or may in the future force backdoors (e.g., Chinese apps, possibly telegram, possibly US apps in the future)
- There are apps that encrypt, are in countries that are privacy focused but are not for free (e.g., threema)
This contributes to a fragmentation that makes WhatsApp the app that-you-must-have
Sure it is supposedly encrypted but I would not bet my money that is without back doors
renzev@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Whatsapp to messengers is what internet explorer was to browsers lol. Slow, bloated, unfree, universally hated, but still somehow universally used
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ain’t that the truth
Redex68@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I mean honestly, feature wise, it’s pretty good in my opinion. It has some very useful features Signal lacks (e.g. live location sharing) and it’s not slow or badly designed in my opinion.
I still prefer Signal since I don’t like Facebook, but realistically speaking WhatsApp is pretty good.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
WhatsApp
Not in the US, pretty much nobody uses it here. Which is really odd to me, since it’s so prevalent elsewhere.
HK65@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
IIRC it’s because US cell carriers don’t charge as much as others for sending and receiving SMS
dubyakay@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Next up:
- Signal getting banned in US govt
- Signal getting banned in the US
- Signal servers seized, devs detained
- Signal protocol repos removed from M$hub
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
For the people who want to use Signal but are stuck in WhatsApp land because all their contacts are on WhatsApp, you should download WhatsApp business and create an automated away message that says that you are only available via Signal and with a link to your Signal account (if you use a Signal username. ) People in my contacts are slowly switching to Signal.
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I did something similar with Twilio. When you call or text my number you get a message about how to reach me.
IceFoxX@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
renzev@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
hmm havent heard of this one yet. Looks promising, gonna try it later. Thanks!
For people seeking an interface similar to signal, I suggest Session. It’s a fork of signal that onion-routes the messages (they have their own onion routing network, not TOR). There are no user IDs stored anywhere, you message people through their public keys. From the user experience side of the coin, it’s a little on the slow side tho.
IceFoxX@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
But definitely find out beforehand whether there were any security gaps or anything else. I followed the whole thing at the beginning of the tox protocol and the clients were not yet fully developed. But since I couldn’t get people away from WA, I forgot about it over time. So I can’t say anything about the security.
I know session… well i have read about it… Didnt test it because i would fail at the same point like with tox.
commander@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Signal has been with me for a decade. Have had Matrix/Element installed for years but no one i know uses it
SGG@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ironically having a giant security breach happen in a security focused messaging app was good advertising.
Of course in this instance the beach was not because of the app, which is a good thing I guess.
rtxn@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
“When something is made idiot-proof, they will just make better idiots.”
bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Gestures broadly at the federal government
Bogasse@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
On Signal you can verify user identify, and you should absolutely do it if we to discuss national security maters.
This is not a hidden feature, I think it’s designed to prevent man in the middle attack. It also work against the “oops I accidentally added a journalist to my conversation no one should know of”, which is so dumb that no one saw this coming 😅
Squizzy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Dont use consumer apps for national security matters.
There was a vulnerability identified in Signal last year that caused the British to discontinue its use. I dont trust the british government but I am wary of what they are wary of.
anonvurr@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It’s not a security breach per se. Someone accidentally added a journalist to the group. Signal is still as safe as it’s ever been.
TheBat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
PEBKAC