• Signal’s new beta introduces numberless registration for new users.

  • It costs a one-time fee of $3, which is paid anonymously and not linked to your Signal account.

  • It also adds support for two-factor authentication for numberless accounts.

  • sem@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    Looks like it currently requires Google play. Not sure how it works on iphone.

    Can I buy an account on a device that has no Play Services?

    Not yet. We have plans to add more payment methods, but currently only offer Play Store in-app payments, which requires Play Services.

    • kbal@fedia.io
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      1 day ago

      I suppose you’d be buying some kind of generated token that doesn’t correspond to your account ID in any way, then doing some fancy math to prove to the Signal servers that you have such a token without revealing which one it is, while at the same time preventing the same token being used more than once. Given that there’s no need to tie it to any real-world attributes of the user (i.e. this is not like “age verification”) it seems like this should be possible, but I’m curious about the details.

      • sem@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        1 day ago

        I’ve heard this schema described theoretically, but never seen an example in production, though i also don’t really seek it out