Signal has started rolling out Signal Login, an optional registration method that allows users to create a Signal account without providing a phone number. The feature will be rolled out first on Android and will come to iOS later.
As we previously reported, Signal Login is not a free alternative registration method. Signal requires users who choose to register without a phone number to make a one-time payment. The price at launch is $2.99 / € 3.49, although this may vary by region and currency.
alright instead of giving them my phone number i’ll give them my credit card number
If it’s “free” with a phone number and costs money to use another method (which is another form of PII) then the only explanation I can see is that having your phone number is worth at least $3 more to Signal than having your credit card number. Or maybe the fact that children can have a phone number but not a credit card and having information on kids is worth more to them.
So for many years, people wanted to use Signal without a phone, a geotracking device, by just registering on Desktop.
But it’s impossible: it must be linked to a phone AND phone number.
After years and years of asking, people can now register with… a credit card?!?
This is a honeypot. Only a honeypot would behave this way and avoid things like Monero, desktop only registration, etc.
I am not sure how the honeypot works, but if it weren’t a honeypot they would be behaving differently.
I recently read an interesting article from someone that helped with the initial design of Signal and who left in anger over Moxie Marlinspike refusing to even discuss the option to not require phone numbers. From the article it was very clear that this was apparently non-negotiable from the start…
The other interesting detail was that apparently there was enough money involved to fly developers from all over the US to Hawaii for a week long hackathon in a rented fancy villa for building the initial Signal prototype, coincidentally very close to the NSA facilities that Edward Snowden used to work in… and this was way before they got the large donations from the WhatsApp founder.
Of course this isn’t proof of anything, but it has a certain smell to it.
I’ve tried simplex a while ago. It felt the most private IM I could find. It’s hard to get people to use it tho
Wish I could pay in Monero… or at least Bitcoin, even over the Lightning Network.
i just wish folks would use threema
Another centralized silo is not the solution, and Threema was recently sold to a dodgy investment consortium that seems to have been purely set up to hide the true owners (and all the original founders of the company left).
good to know.
Do they have any guarantee about not logging payment details?
Edit: As another comment mentioned, Signal doesn’t have access to the payment details, but Google does as Play Services is required for the transaction, making the situation still problematic.
Still depends on Google? Into the trash bin it goes.
Hopefully they can adopt FOSS payment methods soon. I’ve heard good things about Taler, but am still waiting for a good reason (in terms of commerce support) to use it.
Signal registration without a phone number now available in Android beta
Oh cool so it’s more private now
(but payment required!)
Oh, so it’s less private now, cool.
I already don’t use it anymore so what do I care, back when they had SMS and Signal, people would download it “just for a protest” and delete it without disassociating their number, and then I’d go to message them but instead of defaulting to SMS because they deleted the app signal defaulted to “still has acct,” but since they’d deleted the app the message gets delivered but only to like, the server I guess.
So now to text those 5 people I have to make Messenger my default, send an SMS, they don’t respond immediately so I switch back to Signal as default, then they reply so I have to switch my default back to Messenger to reply, and so on. Sure, now that is probably fixed with them dropping SMS support, maybe, but I’m already using Delta Chat since it took them SIX FUCKING YEARS to solve that and I wasn’t going to wait, so, sucks to suck I guess.
People using apps that store their data in silos… As fair as i know signal business model isn’t sustainable. Let’s see how much they’ll cry when signal will start charging for basic usage.
Having to pay shouldn’t be a thing, f that shit
Wow great! More google, signal is for definite not working for the people but for the govt with cool tech.
More google, signal is for definite not working for the people but for the govt with cool tech.
Could someone rephrase/translate this for me? I can’t make sense of it right now. 😅
😂 My point is signal is not going forward to be decentralized, they have history of suppressing forks. Also always reuqireing phone numbers and now when they don’t, they require another piece of personally identifiable information. It has mass following, lots of money and status as a best and most secure app for chat. Techniacally it is good, but the other stuff looks like they just don’t wanna go decentralized way, make app more indestructible(what guarantees one day US won’t just shut the door).
Sorry english is not my first language and i am dispointed in tech and pessimistic about it
Understandable 😁, and no worries!
