Could you all just stop trying to flee corporate greed jumping from one company to another? We already have XMPP, Matrix and other descentralized solutions.
I have this in Threema. Thank you
Oddly enough, once you make that three fiddy payment signal will now potentially have a payment method linked to your account.
If this is true that payment method can essentially be tied to a identity.
I suppose the reason they are choosing to do this is to prevent a influx of bot accounts and spammers/scammers.
And if you are worried about Google’s involvement in this, Greyson Parrelli of the Signal team points out that the payment runs through the same zero-knowledge proof setup it uses for donations.
Looks like there is some way of decoupling the payer identity from the signal user
I figured they must be doing something along those lines, thanks for sharing!
it gets worse
The feature currently requires Google Play Services, as payments run through the Play Store, making it such that devices without Play Services cannot access it
I would rather give Signal my phone number than use a smartphone with Google services.
… don’t they know that as soon as you use your Google account you’re ID? Like doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose?
No, they DO know that.
The only way to communicate anonymously across the internet is Tor.
Yeah why am I donating $10 a month every month for them to come up with shit like this. Google? Really? Now I question what else is going on behind the scenes.
if you’re donating, you should know they have a system to collect payments zero-knowledge (which they’ll also use for the $3)
From the official announcement
Can I buy an account on a device that has no Play Services?
Not yet. We have plans to add more payment methods, but currently only offer Play Store in-app payments, which requires Play Services.
Ok so given how long it took them to allow an alternative to phone numbers, it will probably be at least 5 years before you can pay using a de-googled phone. I really don’t understand what’s so hard for them to accept crypto, they already do for donations. Smells like government involvement.
Seriously, if the point is to just have some monetary cost, why not just accept it as a bit of crypto?
That’s shitty, they have some cryptocoin don’t they? Sure it’s not great but if you exchange from some other currency and pay fast there’s not much risk
Yup they have their own crypto but they won’t accept it for creating accounts.
if you exchange from some other currency
Exactly. I can see why they probably won’t accept Monero for regulatory reasons, but just accept bitcoin so I can use a swap and pay with my monero
You mean they want to identify you from your credit card instead of your phone number? Bah.
They claim it’s “zero knowledge” proof through Google pay, meaning that Google will know you paid Signal, and Signal knows you paid them, but there is no link between the two that uses your PII payment info to identify the Signal account. I’m inclined to believe them.
If Google and Signal collude can they link payments to accounts via timing attacks? My guess is yes
Google will know you paid Signal
That’s not ok either! Just stop playing these games and stop obstructing self hosting. When they come to round up all the Signal users, they won’t care what account belongs to who. So there should be no database that identifies the users.
If “they” get to the point of rounding up all Signal users, not using Signal will not prevent you from being rounded up.
First they came for the Treema users…
It is almost as if they have no fucking clue who their customers are. Hilarious.
Not me. But the author.
Why is Signal always doing weird shit?
I didn’t expect to get cancer from a website called itsfoss.com, but I guess it’s time to put an adblocker on my tablet, too.
Firefox+unlock+unlock paywall extension is the bare minimum to navigate.
Brave as fallback if something breaks.
Adblocker is the minimum requirement for modern web.
Much better.
-in the arms angels plays- Sarah m: “for only zero dollars, we could all migrate to reticulum and really inconvience the rich.” -slideshow of rich reptiles plays- “May you fiiiiiind some comfort here…”
“I have $3”
