Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
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Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
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Signal knows who you’re talking to – Sane Security Guy (sanesecurityguy.com)

submitted 3 months ago by clot27@lemmy.zip to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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[–] it_depends_man@lemmy.world 34 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don't really get it,

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.

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.