The Signal messenger and protocol.

Hi all.

For a long long time I've been very happy with Signal, but have lately become rather annoyed that:

1. it too often bugs me about about an update and forces me to do an update before I can write to my single/only recipient, and
2. it too often bugs me about my pin code, even tho I never asked for such an annoying level of security.

These security measures are completely overkill for my/normal use, unnecessary, annoying and very aggressive. I'm an adult, and unless there's a super dangerous zeroday attack/vulnerability, I don't need constant forced updates, I don't want to retype a pin code for any reason or interval, and I certainly don't need to be told how I should run my system, when to upgrade or have software on my system that 'randomly' gets locked down for whatever reason.

Does anyone know how I can turn it off (Linux, Android) ? Is there another client fork that don't force me to follow their idea of what security level is necessary ?

Thanks, and apols for negativity..

We are getting Cloud Backups in the future! Currently, there are two tiers planned:

The free tier offers:

• 30 days of media backup
• ??? GB of storage

The paid ($3 / mo) tier offers:

• media & text backup forever
• 1TB of storage Both tiers' features and the pricing of the paid plan are still subject to change

What do you think about this?

Sources: SignalUpdateInfo

Many of us (or at least me) would probably like to see Signal getting decentralized. Here are a few thoughts I had about this recently.

First let me define three persons:

• Peter (using the official signal.org instance)
• Ted (using the example.com instance)
• Andrew (using his own instance under andrew.chat)

Couldn't we use the upcoming username feature to build a decentralized signal network? For example with a modified client or maybe just a modified libsignal library we could parse the instance from the username which would look like an email address (ted.42@example.com or andrew.62@andrew.chat). If the username doesn't have a domain part it just uses the default instance (so Peter just has the username peter.94).

Maybe we have some people here who are already familiar with the Signal codebase and willing to assist?

EDIT: Yes I know Session and Matrix exist but Session is to extreme and technical and Matrix is more focused on communities and groups which aren't even encrypted. Besides that both of them have a much smaller userbase compared to Signal.

I've been wanting to link my Android tablet to Signal for ages now and recently came across Molly as an alternative app to use, which allows this possibility.

To import a backup from Signal you must use a matching or newer version of Molly, though, and where Molly is 6.41.3-2, Signal is 6.43.2, so I'll have to wait a bit before I can switch, I suppose. Looking at the open issues on Github though, it seems linked devices aren't all that stable yet.

How are your experiences with Molly, if you have them?

(I came across this disclaimer too: "unofficial forks are not supposed to use Signal’s infrastructure so Molly violates Signal’s TOS".)

Tl;Dr: Beeper has rolled out a new app, Beeper Mini, just for iMessage. It claims that the new app is a privacy improvement over the standard Beeper app (now called "Beeper Cloud")

The claims:

All messages are end-to-end encrypted before being sent. Beeper (and Apple) cannot see your messages.

Encryption keys never leave your device.

Beeper Mini connects directly to Apple servers. There is no Mac server relay, like other apps.

No Apple ID is required. Beeper does not have access to your Apple account.

Your contact list never leaves your device.

In another post, Beeper says they plan to add Signal to Beeper Mini.

I currently use Beeper, but I do not give it access to my Signal messages.

If these new claims about Beeper Mini are true, though, and if Signal is ever supported in Beeper Mini.... I might actually consider bringing it in. I would love to have fewer chat apps!

For those who have installed Signal Desktop in Linux, do you use an AppArmor profile to harden the program? If so, can you share your AppArmor profile for Signal Desktop?

Some interesting ideas on reducing the time to decrypt certain ciphered info, in spite of axolotl's large key-size.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/6073226

When I press on some message to forward it, it shows me Random usernames of contacts I don't know. And it even shows some Mobile Numbers I don't know. For example, one number starts with +964 that's Iraq. I'm from Europe tho. These contacts and numbers are from all over the place.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/8055696

Would it be possible to implement RCS in Signal, if Google/Apple allow access to their RCS cloud infrastructure? Has anyone heard of speculative plans for that?