On its 10th anniversary, Signal’s president wants to remind you that the world’s most secure communications platform is a nonprofit. It’s free. It doesn’t track you or serve you ads. It pays its engineers very well. And it’s a go-to app for hundreds of millions of people.
  • kbal@fedia.io
    110·
    3 months ago

    I wish Signal was developed more openly, more like the linux kernel for a “critical infrastructure” example. I wish it had more features, so it could take the place of something like Slack. I wish it supported interoperability like fedi.

    But it’s good for what it is and I sure am glad it’s around. People who disrespect it don’t know what they’re talking about.

      • BassTurd@lemmy.worldEnglish
        452·
        3 months ago

        I think yours is the first comment I’ve read that has Proton hesitancy. I’m curious what your reservations are.

        • ElectroLisa@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          132·
          3 months ago

          Not OP, I’ve heard criticism of their recent Duo subscription and their bitcoin wallet.

          I use Proton services and my biggest gripe is their mediocre Linux VPN app. No binaries to download/Flatpak, advertised port-forwarding isn’t fully implemented and requires playing around in a terminal, and UI feels less polished than it’s Windows counterpart.

          There’s a community made Flatpak of ProtonVPN though, in case it helps anyone

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            5·
            3 months ago

            Honestly, I just use wg-quick to connect to VPNs, and I tested out ProtonVPN and it worked fine with it. I even set up my router to connect to ProtonVPN, so I could have a wifi network that’s always connected to their VPN.

            But I’d really rather not have the same company host my VPN, email, and other stuff, I’d prefer to separate them a bit so no one company has a lot of my data. And something like a VPN really doesn’t benefit from bundling anyway, unless it’s bundled with a browser or something a la Mozilla VPN.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
          72·
          3 months ago

          Not OP

          There’s not a lot of negative press about them.

          They complied with Swiss government requests to out the IP of a French activist.

          It looks like they’re really doing the best they can.

        • Zetta@mander.xyzEnglish
          72·
          3 months ago

          I actually don’t know what people’s hesitancy is, but I’ve seen numerous people say proton is not good, we’ll see if anybody chimes in with a reason.

          • forgotaboutlaye@lemmy.worldEnglish
            12·
            3 months ago

            I’ve seen doubt of it’s push to pack products into it’s offering ala Google - however I don’t see that as enough to call it not good.

            It’s also very easy (and suspicious imo) for anyone to call a service not good without any reason to back it up.

            • ElegantBiscuit@lemm.eeEnglish
              4·
              3 months ago

              I see that as offering services that people clearly use and value, and that the bills have to be paid somehow. So as long as proton can deliver the privacy and security features it promises, I personally don’t see anything wrong with providing an alternative when the only other options are built on monetizing your data.

          • Bakersfield@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            3 months ago

            The email service says it was unable to appeal a Swiss court’s demand to log the IP address of a French climate advocate.

            This weekend, news broke that the anonymous email service ProtonMail turned over a French climate activist’s IP address and browser fingerprint to Swiss authorities. The move seemed to contradict the company’s own privacy-focused policies, which as recently as last week stated, “By default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be linked to your anonymous email account.”

            Edit: formatting

          • vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            11·
            3 months ago

            I often figure it’s google bias and / or people trying to impose their threat models on other people.

            Been using proton for quite a while with a few custom domains and am impressed with the service to price of their offerings.

            We can one off use cases with any vendor, but at the end of the day, they offer a more secure out of the box experience than just about any other platform out there. If someone is doing illicit shit and gets popped, it’s not on the service provider to provide air cover for them. Improve your opsec or self host.

            • dubyakay@lemmy.caEnglish
              11·
              3 months ago

              You set up the forwarding in google, not proton. You mark the forwarded emails in your proton mailbox. You forward the emails to your proton account until you changed all the sources that you care about from your google to your proton mailbox. Then you turn off forwarding.

              Google never gets any more data from you except your protonmail address.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              6·
              3 months ago

              It’s really nice for the transition period. I personally forward my email to Tuta, which lets me slowly convert my services to my new address. I have my most important ones switched over now, but I had to switch dozens over (I would do 3-5 at a time, which was a pain).

              I’ll probably leave my gmail forwarding to my Tuta account, just because there’s no way I’m going to go though every single service I have ever used and switch it over, and inevitably some contact will continue using my old email.

              As far as Google goes, all it knows is that it’s getting less and less emails, and that what remains is being forwarded to <email>@tuta.com. But that’s not my main email address though, it’s just the one I set the account up with. I actually use <name>@<custom domain>, and I have a bunch of aliases configured for each type of account (e.g. <name>-banking@<custom domain> for my bank accounts, <name>-bills@<custom domain> for utilities and whatnot, etc). But that’s still not my actual, personal email, which is <name>@<different custom domain>, and I only give that one to my family and friends.

              So in short:

              • gmail -> tuta.com email - all Google knows about
              • random online accounts -> custom domain 1
              • family/friends -> custom domain 2

              If I can convince my SO to switch, I’ll give them an account at custom domain 2 and tell them to only use it for personal contacts, and to have everything else go through their old gmail or a Tuta alias. If I ever decide to switch to Proton, I’d have to transition all of those custom domain 1 emails to some proton aliases (unless I pay for the higher tier), which would be a pain, especially since the main reason I use these custom domains is to make it easier to switch services (e.g. just point my DNS records to the new host).

            • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pubEnglish
              2·
              3 months ago

              That’s not everyone’s privacy posture. Some people use Proton to hide, some people use it to secure, some for both. If your goal is to secure, google’s antiprivacy isn’t against that.

              I’m with you, though.

        • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          51·
          3 months ago

          Swiss laws aren’t as tight as a lot of people think.

          I’d like for them to lean more heavily into open source

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            6·
            3 months ago

            It’s probably tight enough for your needs. Unless you live in Switzerland or are breaking Swiss law, they’d need a really good reason to send your data anywhere.

            That said, I use Tuta. They have a similar source model (open client, closed server) and are based in Germany, but since they’re an underdog, they have a bit more value and lower costs. I pay €3 and get 3 custom domains and 15 aliases, whereas w/ Proton I pay $4 and get just 1 custom domain and 10 aliases; I can also add people to my plan for €3, instead of upgrading to a Duo for $15 or family for $24. If Proton matched Tuta’s features, I’d probably pay slightly more for the better UX, but I use those features so I’m very hesitant to give that up. I don’t intend to use their VPN or other products, so I’m very much not interested in their higher tiers.

            I do wish their server code was open source and self-hostable. I’d love to use my own storage, but still use their spam filtering and whatnot.

            • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              3 months ago

              Unless you live in Switzerland or are breaking Swiss law

              That’s the thing though, governments tend to make everything illegal so they can selectively enforce.

        • Cocodapuf@lemmy.worldEnglish
          24·
          3 months ago

          Yeah, I don’t trust proton mail.

          First off, email is inherently insecure, trying to secure it is largely a waste of time.

          Secondly, proton has complied with subpoenas in the past, revealing user messages to authorities/governments.

          Finally, it’s just too centralized, with a single point of failure, why would you trust it?

  • sailingbythelee@lemmy.worldEnglish
    662·
    3 months ago

    This is a very rude question, but on this subject of being lean, I looked up your 990 and you pay yourself less than some of your engineers.

    Yes, and our goal is to pay people as close to Silicon Valley’s salaries as possible, so we can recruit very senior people, knowing that we don’t have equity to offer them. We pay engineers very well. [Leans in performatively toward the phone recording the interview.] If anyone’s looking for a job, we pay very, very well.

    So, I googled their tax filing out of curiosity. It’s true that Meredith pays herself much less than her engineers, which is great. What I was rather shocked to see is that they pay their software developers enormous salaries. They’re listing developers making over $400,000 per year, with their VP making over $660,000 per year. Now, I’m all for the value-creators making more money than the CEO. I just had no idea that software developers make that kind of coin. I was thinking of donating to Signal, but I’m kind of weirded out by those astronomical salaries.

    • mosiacmango@lemm.eeEnglish
      411·
      3 months ago

      That’s inline with Silicon valley salaries. Basic houses cost 2mil there, so it’s not completely outrageous.

      As an example, openai pays all its engineers 300k flat+500k/yr in some stock based asset. Another example is Netflix, who are notoriously a very fickle employer, but salaries start in the 400k range and go up from there.

      • sailingbythelee@lemmy.worldEnglish
        241·
        3 months ago

        Yes, the article makes the point that Signal needs to compete for talent with the rest of Silicon Valley. I get that. And we’ve all heard about the nearly unfathomable amounts of money that tech companies throw around. When you break it down to individual salaries, though, and see that even normal people in normal jobs are making a million dollars a year between salary and stock… well, I think it really exposes the spectacular wealth inequality that we have allowed to fester. I mean, sure, shelter costs may be high in Silicon Valley, but the cost of other goods remain about the same. A $50,000 truck that an average person in Nebraska might have to save for years to afford is barely a rounding error for folks making a million a year. I’m no economist, but it does seem like there are consequences for this kind of ever-growing wealth inequality.

        It is also absurd on its face for a multi-millionaire developer to place a “Donate Now” button in an app and talk about being a non-profit to tug at the heart strings of people who make one-tenth of what the developers are making. It’s feels like Scrooge asking Tiny Tim for a donation.

        Anyway, I don’t blame the developers for this absurd situation, and I do appreciate Signal, and Meredith is clearly a cool person who is fighting the good fight against big tech surveillance. But every once in a while an article like this reminds me how deeply fucked up the world is. It seems we are approaching pre-French Revolution levels of economic disparity, and maybe it helps explain why so many working class people are pissed off.

        • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
          38·
          3 months ago

          I cannot WAIT for the inevitable market correction on SWE salaries. Entitled bastards.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      17·
      3 months ago

      Not all SW devs make that kind of money. I don’t live in Silicon Valley, and I make significantly less than that amount. I could probably get a job there making somewhere north of $300k, but my expenses would go through the roof and I’d be stuck in SV traffic all the time, no thank you. I get paid well, but less than half what Signal is paying.

    • Linktank@lemmy.todayEnglish
      161·
      3 months ago

      I mean, how does a free app with no advertising in it make that kind of money?

      • trailee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        22·
        3 months ago

        A free app with no advertising doesn’t make that kind of money, it gets progressively deeper into debt to a good Silicon Valley rich guy who got it off the ground, Brian Acton.

        His biography on the Signal Foundation website:

        Brian Acton is an entrepreneur and computer programmer who co-founded the messaging app WhatsApp in 2009. After the app was sold to Facebook in 2014, Acton decided to leave the company due to differences surrounding the use of customer data and targeted advertising to focus his efforts on non-profit ventures. In February of 2018, Acton invested $50 million of his own money to start the Signal Foundation alongside Moxie Marlinspike. Signal Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to doing the foundational work around making private communication accessible, secure and ubiquitous.

        Prior to founding WhatsApp and Signal Foundation, Acton worked as a software builder for more than 25 years at companies like Apple, Yahoo, and Adobe.

        The Wikipedia article on the Foundation says the loan balance was up to $105M later in 2018. Meanwhile, Acton is still worth $2.5B according to Wikipedia, so things are probably fine for now, even 6 years later.

        But you’re right that Signal eventually needs revenue to keep even a small team of high caliber software engineers and devsecops folks around. You very much want excellent engineers to continue to be involved with critical encrypted communications software on an ongoing basis, so it will cost money indefinitely. Presumably Acton does not wish to bankroll it indefinitely.

        Again back to the interview:

        I wouldn’t imagine that most nonprofits pay engineers as much as you do.

        Yeah, but most tech is not a nonprofit. Name another nonprofit tech organization shipping critical infrastructure that provides real-time communications across the globe reliably. There isn’t one.

        This is not a hypothesis project. We’re not in a room dreaming of a perfect future. We have to do it now. It has to work. If the servers go down, I need a guy with a pager to get up in the middle of the fucking night and be on that screen, diagnosing whatever the problem is, until that is fixed.

        So we have to look like a tech company in some ways to be able to do what we do.

        I’m really glad they pay those engineers that much, so that Zuckerberg and his ilk can’t entice them away with oodles of money. One presumes they also believe in the cause, but I think this currently looks like Acton fighting surveillance capitalism with what capitalism got for him earlier in his career.

        Cofounder Moxie Marlinspike is clearly a brilliant hacker and coder who was crucial to Signal’s creation, but I think it makes sense that he hasn’t stuck around to try to solve the long term business problem of keeping it aloft infinitely.

        So what to do about it? The OP interview is with Meredith Whittaker, who’s entire job is figuring that out:

        Since she took on the presidency at the Signal Foundation, she has come to see her central task as working to find a long-term taproot of funding to keep Signal alive for decades to come—with zero compromises or corporate entanglements—so it can serve as a model for an entirely new kind of tech ecosystem.

        I’m a recurring donor because I want Signal to succeed and I want to vote now with my wallet, but fundamentally it’s on Whittaker to figure out how to make the long term work. Here’s what she says:

        I see Signal in 10 years being nearly ubiquitous. I see it being supported by a novel sustainability infrastructure—and I’m being vague about that just because I think we actually need to create the kinds of endowments and support mechanisms that can sustain capital-intensive tech without the surveillance business model. And that’s what I’m actually engaged in thinking through.

    • higgsboson@dubvee.orgEnglish
      8·
      3 months ago

      Yeah, that’s not especially enormous compared to startups in the valley offering huge equity alongside already generous compensation packages.

  • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pubEnglish
    553·
    3 months ago

    My only gripe with signal, is the use of phone numbers as usernames. Not everyone with whom I want to communicate via signal has a phone number. I understand why they went this route, but wish there was an alternative way.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      34·
      3 months ago

      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.

      • EpicGamer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        3 months ago

        I think another reason they use a phone number is that it can mitigate issues with people or bots creating hundred of accounts maybe

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          5·
          3 months ago

          But there are plenty of other services that don’t require a phone number that also seem to mitigate that issue, so while it may be a convenient option, it’s hardly the only option.

      • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pubEnglish
        8·
        3 months ago

        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.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          4·
          3 months ago

          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.

          • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pubEnglish
            5·
            3 months ago

            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?

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  2·
                  3 months ago

                  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.