I understand that it may be problematic sometimes but this was very smooth. I didn’t even say anything.
A: what’s your number for the whatsapp group Me: I don’t have whatsapp because of facebook. B: ok, we have to use signal then A: ok
And that was it. Life can be very easy sometimes
Surprised that happened. Very rare to see that these days.
Maybe OP works on infosec and the team was like yeah, makes sense?
Let’s say I work in an IT area (but not infosec)
Should have used Matrix
For a team of 20 people matrix is way overkill imo
XMPP on the other hand…
There would be room for expansion. What about an IRC then?
Depends. Since this is seen as an out-of-band coms option for work, there is a good chance you will want encryption for only folks in the room either for accidental company secrets leaked or to shit talk folks outside the room. IRC, the best you get is TLS.
I once setup a entire matrix server for my school club that comprised of 4 people because one of our members couldn’t use discord lol
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I’m going to join OP’s company next and say I can’t use signal because phone companies. Then they’ll upgrade to Wire or Matrix
Not great
They only realized that when he said that? What a weird infosec team. I guess they also could use SimpleX if they wanted the most secure, private and anonymous option, but I think Signal is pretty well balanced as a messenger. Good privacy and usability.
I think you’re over estimating people who works in infosec. All the people I know that work in infosec in corporations are just regular windows support people assigned to keep the security updates on day.
There may have been discussions around it beforehand. I didn’t ask why it went so smooth.
What you didn’t realize is that your value to the company is way more than you realized.
Often times people have resolved all the rational arguments to act on a decision but lack on an emotional excuse to figuratively pull the trigger. I’d bet on someone high up had already made up their mind and you not using WhatsApp was the perfect excuse to just have the whole team finally migrate.
At first from the title it seemed like they changed app to avoid you
yeah, that was funny. Creating a group without OP wasn’t enough, they had to change apps lol
That’s exactly what I thought as well from reading the headline. It definitely could have been worded better.
yeah, some title gore going on here.
Before Signal made the boneheaded move of removing SMS support, it was so much easier for me to pitch the idea of using Signal to my friends and family, most of which eventually did make the shift from SMS to Signal messages for reasons like ease of use when it came to group chats, sending images/videos, voice clips, etc.
But now? Now it’s one of those embarrassing moments where I hear back from people basically all saying "your tech recommendations are usually on point but uh, what happened with Signal???" because the app just abruptly stopped supporting SMS and ruined the seamless appeal. SMS support was the perfect way to ease people into shifting towards Signal messages and now the only damn people I know who still know Signal are my most privacy-minded friends/family, while everyone else has switched back to WhatsApp.
Clearly I’m not bitter…😅 But I mean like, come on. I had the most notorious luddites in my social circle make the switch to Signal and they loved it. The shift from SMS to Signal messages was so smooth so many of them didn’t even have that "I miss [SMS stuff]", plus they LOVED that Signal could be used on their laptops in addition to their phones. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this annoys me so much.
I totally agree. And to make matters worse, one of their arguments was that supporting SMS was taking resources away from developing other features. But what mind blowing features have come out since they dropped SMS? Usernames, I guess, which they were working on anyway. New app icons…
Why did they remove SMS support?
Think it was related to the messages being insecure and signal didn’t want people to be confused.
If your using signal your messages should be secure. SMS messages aren’t secure. It may have been clear to you when Signal send an sms or an encrypted message, but they need to cater to everyone.
That just feels like shooting themselves in the foot. Just inform the user SMS isn’t secure. That’s it.
Not being willing to trust the user with the information so they can make a choice is asinine. It’s the same reason why I stopped using Tuta. Complete privacy and security are great but if there’s no option to make things a little more open for the sake of convenience or interconnectivity, I’m just not interested.
Security and privacy shouldn’t be a prison.
You can’t target UX to the average person. It won’t work for most people. You need to target those that struggle with technology the most to make it accessible.
Signals main unique selling point is its security, not its ease of use. If people fall into useing signal in a insecure way, it can be hard to say signal is a secure messaging app. As many people may be using it insecurely.
https://www.howtogeek.com/787957/why-sms-needs-to-die/
SMS is bad, and on the way out. Besides that, I barely noticed when Signal stopped allowing SMS.
I guess in some circles it matters, but seems like most people use messengers nowadays.
Bad? Yes, on the way out? Maybe(mostly gone outside the US), but it’s really slow here in older less tech savvy demographics.
Which is a BS argument because the app was VERY clear about it
I think you underestimate how oblivious many users are when it comes to using software.
Honestly that was the initial appeal. Grandma didn’t notice or care that the old SMS app was hidden & just thought there was an update. That ignorance meant she was talking in an encrypted fashion where possible even if accidentally. And since you will need a SMS app anyhow for OTP & other one-off notifications, might as well have it all in one spot. The fact it is different is probably more confusing to some users.
And without that appeal, the missing server code history, the US government funding, centralized service, the requirement of a SIM card (which many places now require ID to get so they can register you in a database), as well as the requirement of bowing to the mobile duopoly (can’t use the service if you have a KaiOS, Linux, or other phone—or without a phone), I don’t know there is much of an appeal. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t gotten my family on it since I would love to ditch Android.
I guess what I want now is a client for both protocols that works like the old app. That would cater to me - I don’t remember which person is on which app so I keep ending up on SMS because it has everyone.
Yup
What were you using SMS for?
SMS is still the dominant message format in some countries
Doesn’t every phone have an SMS app? What’s the benefit of having SMS in signal?
the core benefit was in adoption. it was easy to get parents, for example, saying that they jist have to bother with one app for all of their messaging.
the minute they have to contend with sms and signal, they don’t mind adding whatsapp in the mix as well.
Conversely, they do mind having multiple apps and only send sms
I mean, if the main draw-card is convenience, then signal isn’t going to have much holding power (especially when combined with the network affect problem and attentions grabbing design of other message apps).
Signal will only really succeed if there is a critical mass of people in your circles who care about security to some degree (it works well for me for this reason).
Not having to guess which app has the person you’d like to contact.
The benefit is that Signal displaces the default sms app and is also Signal. Rather than having to jump between 2 apps.
Well, they partly took that “feature” away because people thought they were sending encrypted SMS messages which is not true. False sense of security.
They just took the secure high road and ditched SMS. It also made the app leaner with a smaller attack surface.
I think they did the right decision. Signal is the secure choice for the masses.
Having said that, I’m using Molly-Foss as it has less footprints, no Google messaging framework, leaner than Signal, with no crypto payment, and an encrypted database at rest.
Sms is also not secure, kinda not what signal is…
Signal started out as textsecure, an sms/mms app that encrypted your text messages. It quietly started sending messages over its server at one point after an update, but before that sms is what it was about.
That’s interesting, I was always under the impression they were moving away from sms because they wanted a more secure client.
But you are already on Signal.
Also I live in a country where SMS is very common
I have a feeling B wanted to use Signal, but expected it to be difficult to make others shift. When OP gave the opportunity, B came in and swyped it right away,
Exactly my thought as well
This headline sounds a lot funnier if you assume “it” means Signal, like I did.
Fuck this one guy in particular.
Still, you were lucky that your colleagues are aware of alternatives and will use it (I hope). I wonder though if people will migrate because of you. Its tough to encourage others to communicate Signal while majority use Messenger or Whatsapp. Their reasoning for that is the most friends and family member are on mainstream solutions.
Signal is an interim solution imo for most people, which I also recommend. Not too extreme, not to “geeky”, which introduces them to alternative app world.
What did you do to offend them?
I first read it that way too.
Why would a workplace need a group chat? Aren’t there any enterprise tools in place to achieve that?
Small companies and startups like to save money
Cannot access work intranet (Teams etc.) from personal phones. Don’t have work phones. They all use WhatsApp so reluctantly, so do I.
I would never join a group chat like that. If they need to get ahold if me after hours, they can call me.
BTW Teams doesn’t live on Intranet. There’s no reason they wouldn’t be able to open up Teams to BYOD beyond incompetence.
I know Teams doesn’t live on the intranet, but I’m not going to put work software on my own phone. Policy needs it to set up a work profile and I then can’t use fingerprint, face or a 4 digit pin. And all the shite that flows through Teams would be be piling up, just like it does on the PC at work, brilliant when you’re only in a couple of days a week. They want me to use a phone? Provide one.
The WhatsApp group is for us to send updates about traffic, if someone can cover a shift etc. it’s not an official work thing. I could of course not use it and just text people. That’s really just making my life difficult whilst sat up here on my high horse with a self righteous look on my face, whilst I miss the chance of an extra shift.
Denying putting work stuff on your phone is absolutely valid. The company should provide a company device in that case. And if you do agree to put company data on your phone, they should give a monthly stipend towards your phone bill. That’s how every org I’ve worked at has approached it.
That requires a business login on your personal device, which is typically against company policy.
Although, so should be sharing work info outside of corporate channels, so what do I know.
Really depends a lot on the groupchat. I was apprehensive but it’s quiet there and overall the things that get sent there are either in office hours (e.g. “internet might be out intermittently we are working on a fix”) to links to pay for something someone paid for outside of work like food or drinks.
I don’t mind it that way, maybe once a week a couple messages
In these companies, does anyone check the licenses in details to make sure using them is ok for the company?
Meta will get at least the metadata: meaning they will record who was in which call connecting from where.
For example, if one member is visiting a client, Meta may be able to infer the relation between the 2 companies.
If any of the people in the room click “report”, then the discussion is sent for review without the encryption protection
I’m pretty sure their user agreement translates to “you agree to let us do whatever the f*ck we want with the data you’re purposely disclosing to us”.
And last but not least: if Meta decides to wipe the archives, any info get lost?
There a reasons large companies ban unauthorized apps to talk about work.
Like I said, it’s for us to talk about shifts and what have you.
I used to work for a small PPI claims management company. Our accounts team had a WhatsApp group for social discussion outside of work.
All of our internal work comms were handled through Slack.
I wish my family was that easy to change, and there are only five of us.
In all my years of not using WhatsApp this has never happened to me lol. At best I’ve gotten some people to message me individually on Signal but not entire groups
Wow, congrats.
Do you have a vacancy?
dream team
these 20 people are awesome :D
Sure and then Santa gave everyone free librebooted thinkpads.
