Signal Back After 24 Hours of Outages Caused by Surging Traffic (androidauthority.com) 36
"After experiencing technical difficulties Friday, the Signal messaging app appears to be back up and running," reports the Verge:
The company tweeted Saturday night that it was "back," although added that some users may still see error messages in their chats. The company didn't explain what caused the outage.
For users still seeing error messages in their chats — which the company said was a "side effect" of the outage that began around 11:30AM ET Friday — Signal tweeted that those messages do not affect security, rather that you may have missed a message from another user. This will be fixed in the next app updates, the company said...
During the outage, the Signal tweeted that it was "working as quickly as possible to bring additional capacity online to handle peak traffic levels."
A headline at Android Authority suggests a theory about what caused the outage: "Mass exodus from WhatsApp causes Signal servers to buckle under pressure."
"Although we aren't certain why this specific outage occurred," they write, "Signal has made it clear that it is seeing a huge influx of new users. The surge in adoption is due in no small part to people running away from WhatsApp after that Facebook-owned service updated its privacy policy."
For users still seeing error messages in their chats — which the company said was a "side effect" of the outage that began around 11:30AM ET Friday — Signal tweeted that those messages do not affect security, rather that you may have missed a message from another user. This will be fixed in the next app updates, the company said...
During the outage, the Signal tweeted that it was "working as quickly as possible to bring additional capacity online to handle peak traffic levels."
A headline at Android Authority suggests a theory about what caused the outage: "Mass exodus from WhatsApp causes Signal servers to buckle under pressure."
"Although we aren't certain why this specific outage occurred," they write, "Signal has made it clear that it is seeing a huge influx of new users. The surge in adoption is due in no small part to people running away from WhatsApp after that Facebook-owned service updated its privacy policy."
They Tweeted? (Score:4, Funny)
Why didn't they Signal? Seems like an admission of defeat.
Re:They Tweeted? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Your nickname says it all.
I'm glad you caught that.
Re: They Tweeted? (Score:2)
Well, actually, . . .
They could make a group and ask every user who installs or updates Signal to join it. It would require a new type of group though, where you can't look up people or make phone calls or the like, to actually be acceptable.
Telegram does exactly that Mostly possible due to their shitty security.
So you are both right and wrong.
Re: (Score:3)
Simple solution (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Bezos will ban it soon anyway. People might be saying unapproved things on Signal.
Re: (Score:2)
What's that old saying people like to tout when they talk about cloud services?
Re: (Score:2)
Rain never strikes twice?
Riiiight. (Score:3)
Because Amazon definitely wouldn't comply with a FISA warrant that would compromise security without notifying Signal, right?
Re: (Score:3)
Amazon can't see anything if everything is end-to-end encrypted, which is the main selling point of Signal. They could collect metadata, but that's about it.
Re: Riiiight. (Score:2)
No, actually they could not even collect metadata. Moxie has written extensively about that, and there are some very clever tricks in there. Many of them groundbreaking.
Last time I checked, being tied to a phone number was the only thing left. But eliminating that is almost completely done. (Hence requiring a password when you restore an account.)
And even with that phone number, it is both much less leaking than you think and if you use your phone OS's regular push service, that service knows you number any
Re: (Score:2)
Reading a bit more on this topic, the term "metadata" seems to be applied a bit more broadly than I meant, such as internal routing information. Impressively, Signal has even gone to lengths to minimize the ability to read even this information. So by that apparently more common definition, you're absolutely correct.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Simple solution (Score:2)
Well, AWS has a new bunch of unused servers.
What really caused the problem: (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
3. No gun talk.
Do not discuss firearms or be public about owning them. Do not display guns, do not open carry, do not give anyone reason to think you own one if at all possible.
My wife's country is the place that does gun culture right. You are issued one when you join the military reserve, which is still required for all young men, and are trained properly in its use. After your service you keep your gun, usually in an official prepper closet at home with emergency rations and medical supplies. The more fancy examples of these are nuclear-hardened. You participate in community marksmanship contests (feldschiessen) to keep in practice.
And above all, you keep your country out of th
Re: So You Just Found Out You’re a Political (Score:1)
And most of all, you have the best goddamn cheese and chocolate and landscape on the planet!
And you only speak in code that no German, French or Italian can ever understand. ;)
I'm not OK with you harboring state-sponsored neo-libertarian fascist terror cells (banks) and fake security product shops operated by the CIA (see recent news) though.
And rule one of the constituional clause is: Do not talk about the underground bases inside the mountains.
While rule two is: Do NOT talk about the underground bases ins
Re: So You Just Found Out You’re a Politica (Score:2)
Re: So You Just Found Out You’re a Politica (Score:2)
But John F. Kennedy and Elvis are still alive and livi~@$_+++NO_CARRIER
Re: So You Just Found Out You’re a Political (Score:3)
"being a conservative American patriot is now officially worse than belonging to a Muslim terrorist "
Now you know how Muslims who had nothing to do with Bin Laden felt during the hysteria right after 9/11. How does it feel?
No outages here. (Score:2)
I call lies.
Sorry about that (Score:3)
The NSA got a bit behind in decrypting your traffic.
It's Elon Musk's fault (Score:1)
Why does signal communicate with servers? (Score:2)
It shouldn't be possible for signal to go down.
Re: Why does signal communicate with servers? (Score:2)
Matching IP addresses. Most people don't have a static IP address so a 3rd party server is needed to find and connect those addresses.
Re: (Score:2)
First thought (Score:2)
DDos, given today's unstable political climate.
If that's true, one has to wonder why this would be covered up.
No problems here.... (Score:2)
No interruption of Signal here. Perhaps the inability to connect was limited to new users? I've been on Signal for 3 years or so.
Centralized Systems != Progress (Score:2)
Signal's centralized approach is, at best, lazy engineering. I miss the days when federated protocols were the default approach on the Internet.
Why does Signal demand access to my address book (Score:2)
If someone contacts me via signal with their name, then my iPhone app shows me their name. If someone contacts me via Signal only with a phone number, I CANNOT add/edit the person's name in Signal without Signal first wanting to connect to my address book.
Why the F*** does Signal need access to my address book to change a contact's alias? I see this as invasive and malicious.
Even Skype years ago, and ICQ in the 1990s let me change a contact's alias ins