![]() ![]() It is impossible for this to happen accidentally because, well, there are an enormous amount (about 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456, or 340 undecillion if you're nasty) of possible Session IDs. This is important because otherwise, when messages are addressed to your Session ID - they could end up in someone else's inbox, which would be the worst possible disaster for privacy and security. If someone had a billion computers, which could each create a billion Session IDs per second, and they ran them for a billion years, they would still have less than a one in a billion chance of finding the same private key and Session ID as yours. But that length achieves something important - it makes it unlikely (like, virtually impossible) that anyone else is going to accidentally (or deliberately) end up with the same Session ID as you. Session IDs are pretty long - there's no way I'll be memorising my entire Session ID any time soon. This immobility means your phone number is almost definitely linked to your real identity, living in a bunch of databases all over the world - and things like SMS scams, spam calls, and social graphing are running rampant. In comparison, phone numbers are becoming increasingly difficult to acquire - so most people just keep the same number for years. Importantly, if something happens to compromise your Session ID-like your real identity being linked-you can instantly create a new one to avoid issues with harassment and lack of digital safety which stem from de-anonymisation. In human terms, your Session ID is created instantly. You don't have to get permission from anyone, access a central database, sign a form, confirm your identity - and you never will. So all that’s needed to create a Session ID is.some random bit of data. Note: The private key is also used to generate your recovery phrase, which is used to gain access to your account. Much like our random string was the ‘seed’ for our private key, the private key will now be the ‘seed’ for our Session ID. Behind the scenes, your private key is the secret code you use to encrypt and decrypt messages, but it’s also used to generate your Session ID. That random piece of data is the 'seed' which we can plug into an algorithm and generate a new (and similarly random) private key. Operating systems have their own secure sources of randomness - which is what we use to get our random string of data. There are lots of ways to produce randomness either 'true random' which normally relies on hardware like video or audio inputs or 'pseudo-random', which relies on a 'seed' (some static piece of information, like the word 'hello') which is then algorithmically processed into something which appears random. A Session ID is born: How Session IDs are createdĪll Session IDs start their lives as just a simple random 128-bit string of data. Why is the Session ID so critical to the way Session works? Well, we use them because they solve a lot of the problems that phone numbers have Session IDs are instant, secure, portable, and anonymous - making them the perfect companion to a private messaging app like Session. Compared to a phone number, the simple and effective Session ID offers huge advantages. Those 66 characters are a whole new digital identity - an identity that is native to the digital, cyber-enabled world we live in. The Session ID is one of the most important parts of Session. If that is your case, try installing older versions of the app.This article will cover some technical concepts - but we will do our best to explain them simply
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