• 11 Posts
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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: December 22nd, 2024

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  • First, it’s very much not a “schizo” thing, and such people might find that offensive so you might consider a better word choice.

    Second, if it’s possible in your area you can pick up a pre-paid SIM from Best Buy or something with cash. They could still possibly link that back to you with cameras in the store so put on a nice medical mask and some glasses and a hat. Shove a rock in your shoe so they can’t read your gait.

    Yes, putting a SIM in your device that you are registered with will identify that phone as yours. But you can just take it out when you’re done. Just have to keep it because you may need that phone number again.

    You can try getting a number from somewhere like Cloaked but they can usually detect if it’s a VoIP.

    Unfortunately a phone number is something society expects you to have in order to participate.





  • Not necessarily. I’m not some sort of tech genius but she’s using some choice language here:

    push notifications for Signal NEVER contain sensitive unencrypted data & do not reveal the contents of any Signal messages

    metadata is not “contained” in the notification.

    When pushed on this she basically changed the subject to “there’s no alternative”:

    Another Twitter user pointed out that rather than the exposure of the text, the bigger issue is that “the push gets sent at all, not what’s in it. It lets an attacker identify somebody by when they get messages, messages the attacker may even have sent.”

    To this, Whittaker replied, “So this is an issue worth clarifying. It’s not possible [right now] to build a mass [communications] app [without] push notifications, [especially with] calling. This is a problem, we agree.”

    https://www.medianama.com/2023/12/223-signal-push-notifications-content-meredith-whittaker/

    I could be misinterpreting these statements but that’s how it reads to me. Seems like encrypting metadata would require Google’s involvement and I’m sure that’s the opposite of what they want.


  • Yes. 100%. Some app creators will encrypt the contents but I don’t think they can encrypt the metadata.

    Even the most “private” of companies like Signal and Proton don’t provide any alternative either. Third-party fork Molly adds UnifiedPush support to Signal.

    From Signal CEO:

    PSA: We’ve received questions about push notifications. First: push notifications for Signal NEVER contain sensitive unencrypted data & do not reveal the contents of any Signal messages or calls–not to Apple, not to Google, not to anyone but you & the people you’re talking to.

    In Signal, push notifications simply act as a ping that tells the app to wake up. They don’t reveal who sent the message or who is calling (not to Apple, Google, or anyone). Notifications are processed entirely on your device. This is different from many other apps.

    What’s the background here? Currently, in order to enable push notifications on the dominant mobile operating systems (iOS and Android) those building and maintaining apps like Signal need to use services offered by Apple and Google.

    Apple simply doesn’t let you do it another way. And Google, well you could (and we’ve tried), but the cost to battery life is devastating for performance, rendering this a false option if you want to build a usable, practical, dependable app for people all over the world.

    So, while we do not love Big Tech choke points and the control that a handful of companies wield over the tech ecosystem, we do everything we can to ensure that in spite of this dynamic, if you use Signal your privacy is preserved.

    (Note, if you are among the small number of people that run alt Android-based operating systems that don’t include Google libraries, we implement the battery-destroying push option, and hope you have ways to navigate.)

    https://mastodon.world/@Mer__edith/111563865413484025