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Alright I'm gonna put a bigger effort to switch to Signal this time around and get a few friends roped in. I installed the APK just recently. I have some questions and am hoping some of y'all fedibrains would have an answer.
1. Is there any privacy difference between Signal from the Google Play store vs installing the APK from Github?
2. Given how locked down iPhones are, could that make Signal inherently less private?
3. Are calls also e2e encrypted?
4. Is it safe to put my Signal username on my bio? Or should that only ever be shared in private?
5. Can anyone with my Signal username also see what name I set as my first name?
Some of these questions might be dumb because I'm still learning the ropes. Thanks in advance!
@lenkotarski If you've already set up your username to be connected to your phone number, I wouldn't publicize your username, and that's all people can see.
So far the Signal folk have committed to publishing the same code in all the places, save the platform it has to run on. It works the same, and is equally private E2EE.
What's hard is that they need to make their documentation easy enough for wide consumption. there are deeper dives than this https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/categories/360000674811-Security
@janisf the other kind user shared that you can turn off a setting that lets people see your phone number. when you say you wouldnt publicize the username, is this out of preference or is there implications that it can be easily bypassed? Personally, I'll stick with the APK but I guess that reassures that the experience wont differ for my friends who probably don't even know what an APK is
@lenkotarski Honestly, right now I'm not remembering how tying your Signal username to your phone number can tie your Signal account to what's possibly searchable outside Signal. I watched a Youtube video? it just made sense to me that a ph# could be a pivot table of sorts, and that's all I bothered remembering.
I've never sideloaded an apk and then tried to check to see if the GPlay link in settings works. I only sideload, now, when the dev doesn't publish for my OS update.
@lenkotarski That seems like something that might be on XDA (xdaforums.com). I haven't been keeping up on the mechanics of apk vs. Play installs. (The long of it: once all the hardware didn't need hacking and Google stopped allowing root access, and moved primarily to Kotlin after I spent $10K learning Java, I stopped digging around and decided I better just teach my kid to code. )
@janisf That's fair. There's a lot of info to keep track of so I guess I'll only share my username in private.