Sticking with the snail mail analogy, what happens when two pen pals keep sending mail to each other from their homes without including return addresses in their envelopes? The postal service might not know who exactly is sending each piece of mail but, over time, they would know that Address A in Lower Manhattan, New York, keeps on getting one-way mail from the post office in 3630 East Tremont Avenue, the Bronx, New York; and Address B in the Bronx keeps on getting one-way mail from the post office in 350 Canal Street, Lower Manhattan.
I mean, no, all they know is that they ALL users get one way mail all the time?
The “over time” in “but, over time, they would know that…” does a lot of heavy lifting. Would they? How would they know that?
Sure, if there were only two participants in the system, I would agree. But we have way more than 2 users on signal.
Someone logging timestamps for messages received on both ends of a conversation would be able to determine that two people are probably talking to each other given enough data. Signal is probably not doing that, but Signal’s other security guarantees provided by an open source client that encrypts communications end to end hold even if the organization was infiltrated or taken over by a bad actor. The anonymity of participants in a conversation is not protected as strongly as the contents of messages.
Steadily growing userbase, 70m active users last year. At any time of the day, seems like timestamps will only show what time each user is usually awake.
I don’t really get it,
I mean, no, all they know is that they ALL users get one way mail all the time?
The “over time” in “but, over time, they would know that…” does a lot of heavy lifting. Would they? How would they know that?
Sure, if there were only two participants in the system, I would agree. But we have way more than 2 users on signal.
Someone logging timestamps for messages received on both ends of a conversation would be able to determine that two people are probably talking to each other given enough data. Signal is probably not doing that, but Signal’s other security guarantees provided by an open source client that encrypts communications end to end hold even if the organization was infiltrated or taken over by a bad actor. The anonymity of participants in a conversation is not protected as strongly as the contents of messages.
Steadily growing userbase, 70m active users last year. At any time of the day, seems like timestamps will only show what time each user is usually awake.