It’s a shame that Signal has discontinued its support for normal SMS, hadn’t implemented RCS, is spending too much effort on “stickers” and now keeps prodding you to donate money. Then there’s the broken notification with iOS users who just don’t find out that you messaged them until they launch the app.
As a direct result my use of Signal has pretty much ceased.
This comment reads kind of weird, as if you feel personally snubbed that they “ignored” your concerns when in reality the app developers just had different ideas about what direction the app would go in.
Like, that’s totally fine! At the end of the day if you were only interested in a replacement SMS app then Signal just wasn’t for you. As someone whose primary interest is the security and privacy guaranteed by Signal not only encrypting messages but also message metadata (something Google’s RCS explicitly does NOT do) I’m perfectly satisfied with how it functions.
That said, I don’t care about stickers or the weird crypto integration, but it satisfies my other needs and includes a desktop client to boot, so I have nothing to complain about.
This was never the expectation. It provided a unified messaging interface and a shallow barrier to entry for people used to SMS.
I could install Signal on a phone for a neophyte user and they could use it as their normal SMS app. Then you could securely message them in the same interface and all of a sudden their messages between you would be secure.
Isn’t that a vulnerability ? if a non-technical person has Signal as their main messaging program (including sms) aren’t they at risk of not being able to tell when their messages are actually secure and when they aren’t ?
I suppose their focus has been on bringing signal in line with other contemporary messengers to give it a similar level of appeal as something like WhatsApp, targeted towards “regular (and not necessarily privacy focused) people”.
I admit i really miss SMS integration, that sort of made it Android’s answer to iMessage, except that it’s still available cross platform.
It’s a shame that Signal has discontinued its support for normal SMS, hadn’t implemented RCS, is spending too much effort on “stickers” and now keeps prodding you to donate money. Then there’s the broken notification with iOS users who just don’t find out that you messaged them until they launch the app.
As a direct result my use of Signal has pretty much ceased.
I can’t blame them for asking for money, it’s a free app but it isn’t free to run.
That said the notifications are royally annoying. My partner has an android, but calls almost never come through and messages are hit and miss.
Asking for money is one thing. Asking for money after removing functionality that I depended on is quite a different thing.
To be clear, I voiced my concerns in writing and was ignored.
This comment reads kind of weird, as if you feel personally snubbed that they “ignored” your concerns when in reality the app developers just had different ideas about what direction the app would go in.
Like, that’s totally fine! At the end of the day if you were only interested in a replacement SMS app then Signal just wasn’t for you. As someone whose primary interest is the security and privacy guaranteed by Signal not only encrypting messages but also message metadata (something Google’s RCS explicitly does NOT do) I’m perfectly satisfied with how it functions.
That said, I don’t care about stickers or the weird crypto integration, but it satisfies my other needs and includes a desktop client to boot, so I have nothing to complain about.
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In their defence: SMS is not secure enough for Signal standards
This was never the expectation. It provided a unified messaging interface and a shallow barrier to entry for people used to SMS.
I could install Signal on a phone for a neophyte user and they could use it as their normal SMS app. Then you could securely message them in the same interface and all of a sudden their messages between you would be secure.
Isn’t that a vulnerability ? if a non-technical person has Signal as their main messaging program (including sms) aren’t they at risk of not being able to tell when their messages are actually secure and when they aren’t ?
I used it as well on my Android, and the UI made it pretty clear when you were sending ‘unencrypted’ texts to someone.
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I suppose their focus has been on bringing signal in line with other contemporary messengers to give it a similar level of appeal as something like WhatsApp, targeted towards “regular (and not necessarily privacy focused) people”.
I admit i really miss SMS integration, that sort of made it Android’s answer to iMessage, except that it’s still available cross platform.
Glad for the addition of user names at least.