You all already know the story about national security leaders, Signal, and The Atlantic by now. But to summarize in one sentence: a top U.S. official accidentally added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to a group chat on the secure messaging app Signal, and members of the group chat then discussed plans for striking Houthi targets (and with what weapons) before they happened or were public knowledge, resulting in a catastrophic leak of information bringing up all sorts of questions about why top U.S. brass were sharing these details on a consumer app, potentially on their personal phones, and not a communications channel approved for the sharing of classified information or combat plans.
According to screenshots of the chats and the group chat’s members published by The Atlantic on Wednesday, the outlet’s editor Jeffrey Goldberg used the display name “JG” on Signal. He also said in the original article that he displayed as JG. Presumably National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, who accidentally added Goldberg, added the wrong JG. This is a big, big mistake obviously.
But there is a somewhat overlooked setting inside Signal that can ensure you don’t make the same mistake. It’s the nickname feature. First, take a look at my Signal when I search for “Jason” when trying to make a new group and add members to it.
What a total fucking mess. As a journalist I receive Signal messages constantly, all day, every day, from people I know and people I don’t. More times than I can literally count, these people use or have names that are the same as people I’ve already spoken to. It gets even worse when someone pinging me uses the display name “M” or “A” or some other single initial.
A couple of those Jasons are Signal accounts belonging to 404 Media co-founder Jason Koebler, who I often have to add to group chats or talk to. But definitely not all of them. So, when creating a new group, I have to figure out, god, which Jason is the Jason I want to add this time. Previously I’ve worked it out by backing out of the create group section, finding the Jason I want, verifying their phone number if it’s available by clicking on my chat settings with them (which it seems you can’t do from within Signal’s create a group section), remembering what color Jason it is, then adding them. This information isn’t available for every contact though.
There is a much easier way, but it requires you to be proactive. You can add your own nickname to a Signal contact by clicking on the person’s profile picture in a chat with them then clicking “Nickname.” Signal says “Nicknames & notes are stored with Signal and end-to-end encrypted. They are only visible to you.” So, you can add a nickname to a Jason saying “co-founder,” or maybe “national security adviser,” and no one else is going to see it. Just you. When you’re trying to make a group chat, perhaps.
See what my Signal looks like after I use the nickname feature to label the correct Jason with “404”:
Signal could improve its user interface around groups and people with duplicate display names. But maybe, also don’t plan sensitive military operations in a group chat like this either.
