I have used Signal for a while, alongside Telegram and Whatsapp. I find the fact that they are chrome apps / require your phone to be online very annoying. Also I find signal regularly messes with the order of messages.<p>Right now I am testing with Wire, and waiting for proper pasting from clipboard. Although I am concerned with privacy, and I applaud the efforts from OWS, usability is more important to me. It will always be some sort of a tradeoff I guess. Although things seem to be getting better I am saddened by the lack of federation.
Ironic that Moxie, who doesn't go by his real name and is the founder of Signal, wants all of his users to identify themselves by providing their phone number and IMEI numbers; IMEI or 'International Mobile Equipment Identity' is a unique 15-digit number assigned to all cellular devices.
I want to add this here...very recently, my family was looking for a new chatting app to use (I tried to get them to use Slack, but they found it a bit too complicated). I really really wanted to use Signal (even with it not having a bots API), but the fact that you need a phone number to sign up is a no-go.<p>My question is..why do you need a phone number (which imo is way more personal, than say an email?). Being security focused...would it not make sense to have as much less info on the person as possible?<p>We have settled on kik for now. (although call support is lacking, i feel like it'll be added eventually)
To me it feels Signal just wants to become the new WhatsApp more than anything. Yes, I'm basing this on the gif support and that it requires a phone number. The security argument only worked as long as whatsapp and co. did not roll out e2ee. I could support a sincere attempt that want to do good which OWS seemed to be doing, but now that they are competing on the emoji front they have lost their edge for me*<p>*I don't really have a horse in this as I use none of them
How does one know that the app being installed through an app store comes from the public source code? Shouldn't I need to create and install my own APK from source?
If you haven't noticed, check out my comments in the article. I provide a concerned, critical response arguing for why Signal might not be a good idea. Or in the least, Mr. Shelton should explain the possible risks and dangers.