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Why doesn't Signal forbid third party clients or at least offer a client certification program to ensure security? (feddit.org)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by Dot@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Signal forks can have unexpected behaviours like retaining deleted messages and also they don't get updated at the same rate that Signal get updated.
Every couple of years I hear a story about hackers disturbing signal with backdoors, which would be impossible or very hard to be done If they blocked third party clients. (Ex: 1)
The amount of people who use third party Signal clients are very few anyway.

I saw what WhatsApp did to forbid modification of it's app which works in stopping a lot of distributions, why doesn't Signal do the same?

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[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 34 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

IIRC, they do forbid third-party clients from their network. You can build it from source, but you won’t be able to connect to production Signal servers.

Third-party clients would not necessarily be a bad thing. Signal has limited resources, and as such has to cut corners. I for one would love a native desktop client that’s not Electron bloatware.

[–] Dot@feddit.org 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (5 children)

There are already 2 third party forks I know of, Molly and Signal-JW.

They both use and access the main production Signal servers.

As I said, a compromise here would be to have a client security certification program, where no other clients outside it would be able to use Signal.

[–] Static_Rocket@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago

I could appreciate a client certification that is optional, like a list of approved clients on their website or something along those lines.

It should not be enforced by killing the client. I like security, but I enjoy software freedom more.

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