Last Tuesday was the worst day for encrypted messaging I've ever had

I was trying to help a buddy in Egypt send a video about a protest through Signal, but the app just kept crashing. Turns out the local ISP there throttled the connection so bad it took me 4 hours to get one 30 second clip through. Has anyone else dealt with ISPs messing up encryption tools on purpose?

2 comments

2 Comments

burns.ruby15h ago

ISP throttling is real but Signal usually gets through it better than most apps. Actually the bigger issue in Egypt right now is the government using deep packet inspection to target Signal traffic, not just regular throttling. The developers have a workaround set up in their settings menu under "advanced" that lets you change the proxy settings to get around that.

robin48911h ago

Respectfully I gotta disagree a bit here. From what I've seen in the Signal community forums, the proxy workaround has been hit or miss for people in Egypt lately. The deep packet inspection tools those governments use are getting smarter, they can actually detect when someone is using a Signal proxy now if they're looking close enough. I've talked to a few folks who travel there regularly and they say even with the advanced settings toggled, the app still drops out or takes forever to send messages during peak hours. The devs are definitely trying but the cat and mouse game is rough when the other side has full control of the infrastructure.