[Cryptography] Signal planning to support for plaintext SMS

[Ralf Senderek]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2022, John Denker via cryptography wrote:

>   [...] I have read their announcement
>   https://Signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/
>
> and their reasoning makes no sense to me.

To me the most substantial section of the blog is this:

      "We are focused on building secure, intuitive, reliable, and pleasant ways
      to connect with each other without surveillance, tracking, or targeting.
      Dropping support for SMS messaging also frees up our capacity to build new
      features (yes, like usernames) that will ensure Signal is fresh and
      relevant into the future. "

While at the start they feel, that having unencrypted messages on board would
help to use Signal as a default, today the risk of a confusion between secure
and insecure messages by the ordinary user demands a clear cut.
Insecure messagers a available in abundance, so users will find an alternative
for insecure messaging quite easily.

>   [...] What's
> worse, it will make the world less secure, by creating a
> barrier to the adoption of Signal.

I'd only support this point in the sense that using Signal in the future
would clearly signal the user's intention (to whom it is of interest)
to use secure messages *exclusively* and not sporadically.


     --ralf