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PSA: We've received questions about push notifications. First: push notifications for Signal NEVER contain sensitive unencrypted data & do not reveal the contents of any Signal messages or calls–not to Apple, not to Google, not to anyone but you & the people you're talking to. 1/
Meredith Whittaker
Meredith Whittaker  
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In Signal, push notifications simply act as a ping that tells the app to wake up. They don't reveal who sent the message or who is calling (not to Apple, Google, or anyone). Notifications are processed entirely on your device. This is different from many other apps. 2/
Meredith Whittaker
Meredith Whittaker  
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What's the background here? Currently, in order to enable push notifications on the dominant mobile operating systems (iOS and Android) those building and maintaining apps like Signal need to use services offered by Apple and Google. 3/
Meredith Whittaker
Meredith Whittaker  
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Apple simply doesn’t let you do it another way. And Google, well you could (and we've tried), but the cost to battery life is devastating for performance, rendering this a false option if you want to build a usable, practical, dependable app for people all over the world.* 4/
Hans-Christoph Steiner
Hans-Christoph Steiner  
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I respect the work that Signal has done, and Signal has been a great leader in pushing e2ee over the past 15 years. Signal can also do better on push. It is not a binary choice, other options provide much improved privacy with smaller hit on battery usage. @unifiedpush does that and falls back to Google push for devices that don't have #UnifiedPush built-in. @fdroidorg is also helping to get it integrated into #CalyxOS #LineageOS etc https://f-droid.org/2022/12/18/unifiedpush.html

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UnifiedPush: a decentralized, open-source push notification protocol | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

A modern Android smartphone relies on a lot of services, from app stores andcalendars to messaging and push notifications. Most of them have openalternatives...
f-droid.org
#lineageos #UnifiedPush #calyxos @F-Droid @UnifiedPush
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