Signal registration without a phone number now available in Android beta
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Signal Login is an optional registration method that allows users to create a Signal account without providing a phone number.

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.

  • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    10 hours ago

    Change has to start somewhere

    I’m trying, but nobody has messaged me yet (see my profile, I’ve had it there for a while!) On the bright side, I guess I’ve enjoyed a lack of spam or other nonsense through sheer obscurity.

    For someone just wanting a group chat with friends/family that they don’t want being used for AI training or sold to ad companies to build a profile on them? Deltachat is more than secure enough, and certainly better than the corporate owned options they likely already use.

    Maybe, although I would argue that if the server is a concern already (E2EE makes it one!) then forward secrecy would be necessary to prevent a single key from leaking the group chat in question. And toward secrecy is no longer a new technology thanks to Signal.

    I’m hanging onto DeltaChat with the hope they implement it as soon as PGP does.

    I haven’t needed to authenticate anything manually in my experience in the XMPP apps I’ve used. I just enable OMEMO encryption…

    I’m unfamiliar with the current state of the ecosystem, but… That’s kind of the problem with it too, right? There is no standard, and unlike even Lemmy, the mishmash leads to user-unfriendliness. Specifically I was thinking of this comment , which may not be relevant to your client:

    Group chats do not have group key, but one encrypt messages for each group member (pairwise), which means that everybody has to do key exchange with everybody. This does not scale… which means that even if membership is stable, new keys may appear. Some clients (Conversations) do not allow to send message to a group when they do not know some keys of some group members/devices , which is fail situation that happen pretty often.

    Regarding attracting users, somebody else noted

    If you tell people “on Android you should use this app, on iOS use that app” - you lose regular people fast. If you have a feature that only exists in one app on one platform, you also really lose people.

    I definitely don’t want XMPP to fail, but it seems that after years, it’s all too little too late. That one, I’m not holding my breath on. (DeltaChat, I am.)

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
      1·
      5 hours ago

      I agree that XMPP has some UX problems that some clients have yet to solve, and that is one area where Deltachat is very much ahead.

      If you tell people “on Android you should use this app, on iOS use that app” - you lose regular people fast. If you have a feature that only exists in one app on one platform, you also really lose people.

      A good solution to this issue would be to exclusively recommend the Movim client.

      Due to it being a web app, it’s compatible across all platforms (any desktop or mobile device regardless of OS), and is the only client that has so far successfully implemented a slew of advanced features that Deltachat does not have, such as Discord-like channels with text and group voice chat rooms, as well as screensharing with audio (I think only on Chromium based browsers so far, as it’s still quite a new feature).

      It still has some UX issues it needs to work on that will cause some friction with normies compared to Deltachat (a big one is that notifications don’t work reliably on mobile yet), but the dev is very open to suggestions of how to improve it, and is very active in developing it (the discord-like features were all implemented just a few months ago). I think it may give XMPP a fighting chance for the future.