• 0 Posts
  • 13 Comments
Joined 12 days ago
cake
Cake day: September 21st, 2024

help-circle

  • Yep, at that point they’re just fishing for more which, hey, why wouldn’t they.

    It’s a give and take for sure, requiring a real phone number makes it harder for automated spam bots to use the service, but at the same time, it puts the weight of true privacy on the shoulders and wallets of the users, and in a lesser way, incentives the use of less than reputable services, should a user want to truly keep their activities private.

    And yeah, there’s an argument to be made for keeping crime at bay, but that also comes with risks itself. If there was some way to keep truly egregious use at bay while not risking a $10,000 fine on someone for downloading an episode of Ms. Marvel, I think that would be great.



  • Says right there in the subpoena “You are required to provide all information tied to the following phone numbers.” This means that the phone number requirement has already created a leak of private information in this instance, Signal simply couldn’t add more to it.

    Additionally, that was posted in 2021. Since then, Signal has introduced usernames to “keep your phone number private.” Good for your average Joe Blow, but should another subpoena be submitted, now stating “You are required to provide all information tied to the following usernames,” this time they will have something to give, being the user’s phone number, which can then be used to tie any use of Signal they already have proof of back to the individual.

    Yeah, it’s great that they don’t log what you send, but that doesn’t help if they get proof in any other way. The fact is, because of the phone number requirement, anything you ever send on Signal can easily be tied back to you should it get out, and that subpoena alone is proof that it does.


  • It’s bad for privacy no matter how you sell it. Unless you have a good amount of disposable income to buy up burner numbers all the time, a phone number tends to be incredibly identifying. So if a government agency comes along saying “Hey, we know this account sent this message and you have to give us everything you have about this account,” for the average person, it doesn’t end up being that different than having given them your full id.












  • I hope it develops a healthy community and we get some good software out of it.

    Thing is, their license denies that outright.

    • No Distribution of Modified Versions: You may not distribute modified versions of the software, whether in source or binary form.
    • No Forking: You may not create, maintain, or distribute a forked version of the software.
    • Official Distribution: Only the maintainers of the official repository are allowed to distribute the software and its modifications.

    Of course, this license is in direct violation of GitHub’s ToS, which states that by hosting publicly on GitHub you accept that anyone can see and fork your code.