this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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You can use a username only for finding and adding friends, you only need the phone number to create an account. That's probably because Signal started as an alternative to Messages (or whatever it was called back then), so you could send SMS if you wanted, or secure messages to friends w/ Signal. The whole point was to be a gentle transition from SMS to private messaging. However, they eventually dropped the SMS feature, but it seems they kept the phone number as username thing.
It kind of sucks, but I think that's a reasonable limitation since the vast majority of people using this service will have a phone number. You could probably even sign up for a free trial of something (e.g. Google Fi) to sign up for Signal, set up the username, and then drop the phone number service. I don't know if there are any problems with this, but I don't think they do anything with your phone number after everything is set up.
Yeah. And I don't fault them for this route. I just with I could sign up without a phone number. Maybe the username thing is a predecessor to allowing usernam-only registration in the future.
Yeah, hopefully. It would also be awesome to have a web login so I could access messages and whatnot when using someone else's computer w/o having to install something.
I don't know what direction they're going, but I'm honestly okay with the caveats that currently exist.
Having web logon would mean they would need to hold the decryption key in some form (or have a weak decryption key, your credentials), so, while convenient, I think it would degrade security and possibly privacy. Unless you mean to receive new messages, the way the desktop app works?
I can't tell if you're joking haha
Why would they be joking? There's really not a big difference between how their mobile and desktop apps work and what's possible in the web. It can fetch the keys from my computer or my phone just like their other apps work, and store the keys and whatnot encrypted in temporary local storage, just like on the phone. WebAssembly could allow them to share the code and retain similar performance.
I honestly don't see an issue here. If they need help, I'd be happy to lend a hand.