Pity; even though all of my family use whatsapp and are unlikely to move, there's a fascinating look on their face when they first ponder the idea they could've picked up their conversation on their big tablet when at home. It just doesn't occur to them to expect / demand more :-/

It sounds like they may want to do this eventually, but it requires some significant re-engineering of how users are identified on the network. This is mentioned near the end of the article:

>That feature might someday even allow Signal to ditch its current system of identifying users based on their phone numbers—a feature that many privacy advocates have criticized, since it forces anyone who wants to be contacted via Signal to hand out a cell phone number, often to strangers. Instead, it could store persistent identities for users securely on its servers. "I’ll just say, this is something we’re thinking about," says Marlinspike. Secure value recovery, he says, "would be the first step in resolving that."

You're closest hope for a skype replacement that runs equally on all platforms is tox, which requires managing your key.

In what way is that practical for a user? Once i've chosen an ID and password for a service I can easily type that in using literally anything that can connect to the service and spew out some characters.

An id linked to a SIM/# is is a real pain in the ass when you need to change your SIM/#, hence why i've got a bunch of old contact numbers for people stored on my phone alongside new ones so I can talk to them on whatsapp or signal and have it show me their name still after they change numbers.

I've also got a bunch of whatsapp contacts that aren't even people I know any more because their numbers no longer belong to them. People who's pictures and updates I can see who I don't recognize or know.

SIM/#'s are ephemeral in a lot of places, I know people that change them fairly regularly, having that linked as some kind of identifier is not good for users.

This is just me making an assertion, so take it for what you will, but the typical user cares a lot more about contact discovery than everything you mentioned, so an authentication system that makes that work more goodly is quite practical for them.

In both situations I have to have a contact's information already to find them. For a ID/password, you need your contact's ID to find them, for a SIM/# system, you need their phone number, every person I talk to on whatsapp or signal have given me their phone number, or vice versa, so we can communicate through those platforms.

I had some friends that used Kik before, they had to give me their username. These two scenarios are exactly the same, in both cases I still need info from my contact before finding them. Only, an ID is more secure, because it can be used only with one service if you so choose, with a SIM/# you have to give your contact your phone number, allowing them to contact you through any other service you use that number with, whether you like it or not.

I cannot see any benefits of that system for the user that you don't get from a ID/password and some cons that personally, I find unacceptable, such as the afore mentioned, seeing stranger's pictures and info just because they have a number my friend used to have, that's downright creepy and makes me wonder how many people who've saved my number can watch me on whatsapp and see when I'm online or check my profile out.

Even people I do know, I don't necessarily want to see on there, employers, numbers i've saved for looking at places to rent, my ex landlord, clients i've had for work i've done. I don't need or want to have all these people automatically added to every chat program I install they also happen to have.

My argument isn't that you are wrong about your wants and needs, it's that you aren't a typical user.

>seeing stranger's pictures and info just because they have a number my friend used to have, that's downright creepy and makes me wonder how many people who've saved my number can watch me on whatsapp and see when I'm online or check my profile out.

>Even people I do know, I don't necessarily want to see on there, employers, numbers i've saved for looking at places to rent, my ex landlord, clients i've had for work i've done. I don't need or want to have all these people automatically added to every chat program I install they also happen to have.

I have, it inspired them to clean up their contact list.

I think you might be wrong on that, based some of the code changes made to Signal over the last few months. They are internally moving to have users be identified by a UUID and phone number. I suspect they will eliminate the requirement for phone number identifiers when they introduce other identifier options.

(I have my thoughts on THAT as well, you'll be surprised, when it comes to security... we're nerding out about obtuse and obscure end-to-end encryption, meanwhile, majority of those 2bil users don't have a lock on their phone, and now they also have no protection on their messaging :-/ )

They still have in-transit protection due to end-to-end encryption, so no protection isn't necessarily true.

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/30/facebook-will-let-users-...

I know it doesn't check all the boxes for you, but hopefully it can improve your quality of life while talking to your family :)

You can ONLY sign up / register / add one device.

Not "at a time", even. At all.

You use your tablet, your phone disconnects.

You use your computer, your laptop disconnects.

You switch from laptop to desktop a few times, and now it's suspicious and gives you additional difficulties or bans you outright (that may or may not still be the case, but was when I tried this nightmare of an app a year ago or so).

You can only have ONE mobile and ONE computer device, at best, if you're lucky, and stars align, and it's second Tuesday of the month and the moon is full and you sing praises to Garmunklee the demon of impractical communication methods. Trying to access it on work and personal laptop; work and personal phone; or on phone and tablet; all is completely outside the supported use case and is for all intents and purposes impossible.

Compare to old-school ICQ, AIM, any XMPP, or Hangouts or indeed email etc, where you can seamlessly transition communication from device to device - and even check your messages on trusted public or 3rd party device such as friend's computer - and it's like waking up in a twilight zone.

It is pretty much the most architecturally user-hostile system I've encountered in my life, but again - I'm clearly in 2,000,000,000 vs 1 minority here :D

You're not supposed to be switching between devices like that. You're supposed to be proxying your messages through your primary device (i.e. cell phone) using the web interface.

Like the UX is bad for people with two phones and the mobile experience of WhatsApp web is nonexistent so that kinda sucks but "having one phone, and sometimes a tablet/laptop with the web interface" covers a lot of people.

E2E is hard when you have to route messages to multiple devices, aren't storing messages in a central server, and those devices can be unavailable for indeterminate amounts of time and no guarantee that a subset of devices having the complete chat history will ever be on at the same time to sync.

OpenPGP has been dealing with multiple recipients since forever with no back channel even.

> ...aren't storing messages in a central server,...

Who cares if we are doing E2E?

> ...and those devices can be unavailable for indeterminate amounts of time and no guarantee that a subset of devices having the complete chat history will ever be on at the same time to sync.

You only have to store the encrypted messages for each individual client until they connect again. If you are doing perfect forward secrecy then the client has to keep the decryption key around until the next connection so the server stored messages can be decoded. Then the key is destroyed.

That's the Apple "You're not supposed to use our device that way" approach, and again, while it works for a huge swath of users and I am completely cognizant I'm in a tiny contrarian minority, it still and nevertheless feels like a hostile user experience.

Note that "Switching devices like that" is ever so tiny a misnomer; I am "Using multiple devices" (not replacing my phones permanently etc, which I get is a more difficult scenario... and one that Whatsapp historically deals with in the most insecure fashion imaginable; until recently their FAQ held explanations that you may get somebody else's messages if you get their phone number; or that if you switch your own phone number you need to email support and wait; it really feels they focused on the E2E encryption, important to tiny proportion of their userbase, over any other security consideration; but again... I get I'm alone in this perception :)

It's not that far fetched to make every conversation a implicit group conversation with n devices on both sides.

None of those are problems affecting Signal.

See the right side here: https://signal.org/download/

> "This is not just for hyperparanoid security researchers, but for the masses," says Acton. "This is something for everyone in the world."

If you want encryption for the masses, delivering 90% solutions and dismissing unconventional use-cases is going to put a ceiling on adoption. It's not just technical users who balk at phone numbers. I'm dealing with elderly users, I'm dealing with kids.

"It's not designed for you" is a reasonable response if you're building a niche product for a niche audience. But it's important to note, that is explicitly not Signal's goal. Signal is advertising itself here as an encryption platform for everyone. A ubiquitous chat problem has higher requirements -- even if 99% of my family has a smartphone, that's not good enough, because we're talking about shared group chats. The solution has to work for 100% of my contacts.

I don't think Matrix is mature enough to trust for super-sensitive communication, I think it's a lot less unpolished than Signal, I think it's a lot more annoying and a lot more buggy. I'm irritated that I'm using it this early in development. But I don't see what the alternative is, because it works for 100% of my contacts, and that's what encryption for the masses requires: 100%.

Heck, I can even bridge Matrix (albeit, poorly) to other clients, a feature that Signal has specifically rejected. Which is a fine decision for a niche product. It's not fine if you want a chat application that everyone can use. I need to be able to talk to users who aren't on Signal.

The "minority" argument is bullcrap given Signal's stated goals in this very article. Sure, Moxie is talking about eventually getting rid of phone number requirements as a highly-theoretical, future event after contact integration, and key retrieval, and whatever. But I'm not going to wait literally years to have a secure E2E conversation with my nieces.

> “It’s not designed for you” is a reasonable response to you’re building a niche product for a niche audience. But it’s important to note, that is explicitly not Signal’s goal. Signal is advertising itself as an encryption platform for everyone.

Aren’t people with no phone increasingly niche?

I’m not trying to be combative but I would argue attempting to build your app for every single use case is literally a million niches which would require so many concessions and that is the opposite of Signal’s approach. Signal has no interest in building for odd and strange use cases and instead choose the most likely use case and build specifically and securely for that use case.

> "I’d like for Signal to reach billions of users. I know what it takes to do that. I did that," says Acton. "I’d love to have it happen in the next five years or less."

When you look at a platform like Slack, it's fine for the devs to say that they don't care about certain users, because Slack is not a universal chat app. Slack has a very specific market: business users. Other users are nice, but not really required, and it's fine for them to go use something else. Signal on the other hand doesn't really have a specific market; they've always described their target market as just 'everyone'.

This is extra-tricky for a chat app because network effects come into play. An app that I can use by myself without relying on anyone else doesn't need to be particularly inclusive: 90% support (or even lower) is probably good enough. But if Signal decides that it's not for 10% (or even 1%) of the people in my social group, then there's a very real chance we might all abandon it. Supporting 99% is excluding not just 1% of your users, but also everyone directly connected to those 1% of users.

And honestly, I would push back on the idea that smartphones are going to reach even 99% saturation any time soon. There's an very consistent demographic of people who don't have phones: kids who are given hand-me-down tablets or laptops. I know a nontrivial number of parents who are waiting longer to give their kids phone numbers, but they still want their kids to be able to message friends and family members. I don't think in 5 years we'll be at the point where every single 5-10 year old has a smartphone.

This is exactly the situation I'm in, where I'm trying to figure out how to allow younger family members to communicate with me, with their parents, with their friends. Even if I set them up with phone numbers, I'm asking them to break contact with anyone else in their social network that doesn't have a phone.

And as the OP states, it isn't just the people who avoid mobile phones who won't switch to tethered protocols, but people who want to message the people who avoid mobile phones. And a high proportion of us have elderly relatives, and we email or Skype or Facebook them.

Note that the polish concerns I have aren't just for Android though -- some of my contacts are only on desktop, and Riot's desktop app also has issues with contrast, resource usage, notifications/updates, searching in encrypted rooms, key synchronization. Even on the backend, setting up closed communities is just really confusing and buggy. I had to abandon a community and recreate it half way through because it bugged out trying to remove an empty E2E room and then couldn't add/remove/edit any rooms after that point -- and this was on the main, public Matrix homeserver.

It's getting better. A year ago, I don't think I could have used Matrix/Riot to the extent I'm using it now. I don't want to be too critical, because it's improving at a genuinely impressive rate. I'm still betting on Matrix being the future-proof choice for me to make for the majority of my chat/community infrastructure.

It just feels like it's still early in development, clients like RiotX are still in beta -- which makes it tricky when I'm trying to roll it out in "production" to very young and very nontechnical users.

On E2E, search is now implemented, as is totally revamped verification and cross signing and fixed key sync, as per https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/matrix/

Communities are a trainwreck but next up to get fixed in the coming months.

Thanks for sticking with it; we’re catching up as fast as we can...

And I just installed RiotX and it shows reactions correctly!

Hopefully comments like this aren't too exhausting. There's two sides of it, one of which is all the stuff to complain about. But the other side is that stuff like Pantaliamon is really cool -- it means if I want to build a custom chat client with weird features, I can have decent encryption for free without having to worry that I'm doing something horribly insecure. The bridges are still getting polished, but similarly, they're also amazing because bridges allow me to make very forward-facing, future-proof decisions about where I want to host communities and I know that I won't have to abandon existing members that are on platforms like Discord.

The core project is just really exciting, it addresses all of these problems that I've had in the back of my head for a long time. There's this wonderful feeling where you're constantly annoyed about something and feel like there's nothing you can do about it, and then one day you find out that not only does someone else feel the same way, but they're actually fixing it. And even more than that, just finding out that it is actually possible for those problems to be fixed; that there's going to be a point in my future where that happens.

So there's admittedly a lot of impatience there, but it's coming from a very hopeful place, and I hope it isn't discouraging.

Is this to work around the Android background task auto-killing?

Note that you can hide the notification by long-pressing it.

> That's unusual for a startup! Startups usually try to make everyone happy!

I don't know about that. Most startups - and especially the successful ones - have few qualms with ignoring "edge case users" and focusing on what they perceive to be their target market.

That one might be called "jabber".

The point is that Signal is designed around your real life identity. That's a real use case, it helps discoverability immensely, and that's generally why people use it. Should you wish to communicate pseudonymously there are plenty of options already available.

(The XMPP suggestion was only partly in jest. Any modern client, such as Conversations, is pretty solid. But there is no shortage of options for chat.)

X stands for extendable in XMPP. Read about OMEMO.

So, one of the problems to bring your use case to life is that you'd need to remember your friends' phone numbers AND you'd need to know that they're on Signal.

Signal, as an app gives your phone the ability to completely replace your sms system seamlessly. If a particular friend doesn't have Signal then it goes via sms.

So, the use case you're mentioning is definitely relevant, but having yama (yet- another- messaging- app) is going head to head with WhatsApp, jabber & co, and not currently what signal seems to be aiming for: secure messaging for the masses.

Maybe in the future it'll add usernames as an address recipient, but it may turn out to be a mess like Skype if so (Am I phoning someone, or skyping? Do i have credits, etc). Currently, Signal clearly delineates in the app ui what's going to happen when you press send (or call).

Maybe using a hash, (like Tox does) is a way to individualize recipients, and meta data: phone, email, etc are then tied to that (eg like keybase does it). This way friends lists can be harvested from the phone (something I'm always wary of) for the masses, whereas privacy conscious ppl can maintain it by giving out a throwaway email address. It means you could set up Signal on multiple phones and not once leak your phone number by using the same hash account. It probably wouldn't even need a password (again, like Tox).

I do regret asking as I wasn't looking for the negativity I received.

Searching for validation for my question found an interesting thread on Thomas and his role here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17019412:

"tptacek is using an appeal to authority given his standing as a security expert on this forum. That's the only reason his comment containing no justification is being taken seriously."