this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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Privacy

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This is a year-old paper but now there is an easy-to-use implementation of the attack: https://github.com/gommzystudio/device-activity-tracker

Signal developers' verdict is WONTFIX: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/pull/14463

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[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 2 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

You can literally turn off read receipts in signal

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 13 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (2 children)

You can literally turn off read receipts in signal

But you can't turn off delivery receipts, which is what this attack uses.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 0 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

But you can turn off sealed sender messages from anyone, so they'd have to already be a trusted contact

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 12 points 19 hours ago

But you can turn off sealed sender messages from anyone, so they’d have to already be a trusted contact

The setting to mitigate this attack (so that only people who know your username can do it, instead of anybody who knows your number) is called Who Can Find Me By Number. According to the docs, setting it to nobody requires also setting Who Can See My Number to nobody. Those two settings are both entirely unrelated to Signal's "sealed sender" thing, which incidentally is itself cryptography theater, btw.