this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mshelton/116214301513839946

article: https://signal.org/bigbrother/district-of-columbia/

context: https://technologymagazine.com/cloud-and-cybersecurity/protonmail-under-fire-over-data-handover

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[–] LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world 28 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

God, I wish more people used Signal

[–] paequ2@lemmy.today 8 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

I've been using Signal more to test if I can recommend it to other people... it's mostly like WhatsApp, which is good...

Except, can we please disable all of those god damn popups. Everyday: "Hey! Verify your pin!", "Hey! Verify your LONG ASS recovery key!", "Hey, plz donate!", "HEY! I couldn't start a backup", "HEY LOOK AT ME!"

[–] YeahToast@aussie.zone 1 points 9 hours ago

I've never had a single one of those prompts or notifications... Now I'm worried I've done it wrong.

[–] white_nrdy@programming.dev 7 points 16 hours ago (2 children)
  • I have never been asked to verify my recovery key.
  • It asks to verify pin once a month. Which I think is fair, since it can help you recover from a lockout / transfer your device.
  • backups are important, but they can also be disabled
  • Donating to open source projects is important, as it's a large portion of their funding.
[–] bss03@infosec.pub 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

I agree with all your points, BUT I do think Signal could be slightly less "user-hostile" with the reminders, maybe?

I get annoyed at the pop-ups in my Linux system, too, and all of them are got similarly legitimate reasons. Getting the way of my current task (or worse stealing focus) doesn't ever seem like the "right" way for computers/tools to behave.

[–] white_nrdy@programming.dev 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

How obtrusive are the popups? Are you on iPhone or Android? The pin verify popup is like 20% of the screen at the bottom for me. And it's nearly the same color as the background, so I sometimes don't even notice it. Or at least, I finally see it and think "how long has that been there?"

I agree that some things can probably be scaled back. But wouldn't it be an even worse experience if someone forgot their pin, and thus was unable to access their data?

[–] bss03@infosec.pub 2 points 15 hours ago

Android and desktop. I'm no UX designer, so I don't know what the ideal is, but when I'm using the software with a purpose, anything that gets in the way of that purpose is (at best) an annoyance. I'm probably wrong, but I think I'd prefer a passive notification to verify pin / donate / whatever that triggers after/as I leave Signal for something else -- a indicator I'm done with my purpose (albeit flawed; maybe I just need to copy info from FF or whatever.)

[–] paequ2@lemmy.today 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It asks to verify pin once a month. Which I think is fair, since it can help you recover from a lockout / transfer your device.

Even that is too annoying. OK, I just realized there's a way to turn off reminders. Trust me bro, I'm not gonna forget. I'm a big boy.

backups are important, but they can also be disabled

Ah! YES! Thanks! I just poked around deeper in the settings and disabled them. Backups are not important to me. I don't want to backup my messages.

I have never been asked to verify my recovery key.

Maybe it's because I had backups on? Let's see if this popup goes away.

Donating to open source projects is important, as it’s a large portion of their funding.

Agreed. Which is why I donate to them.... And I still get the popups! I'm already a donor, leave me alone.

Overall, I want to give my attention to my messages, not to Signal. Leave me alone. Let me message people. I don't want to be nagged. WhatsApp doesn't nag people nearly as much. I know Signal is overall better, but user annoyances like the excessive popups makes it harder for me to try to convince normal people to use Signal.

[–] PokerChips@programming.dev 1 points 12 hours ago

The reminder is a good idea. Maybe tone it down to every 3 months after a year. Although, I don't think it's that big a deal.

[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 6 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

One problem with Signal is that it can be difficult to connect with someone who is on there.

I've run into this a couple of times myself. And I've had friends run into it too. We know for a fact someone is using Signal, but you can't find them in the search, even though you have them in your contacts with the correctly formatted number.

Personally, this issue has become a stumbling block for getting people I know to use it more.

[–] PokerChips@programming.dev 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Yes this is a problem. They use to have it so that you could see all your contacts and you could use it as your normal messenger app and if they also had signal then you get encryption. At least now you can use a username instead of a phone number. Problem with that is you can only have one username. You can change it but that gets messy.

[–] white_nrdy@programming.dev 3 points 16 hours ago

Does that person allow searching by phone number? That is a setting you can disable.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Do you have to find a person in search to be able to send them a message?

[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

Yes, at least that's been my experience.