Cannot delete Signal contact

[RalfJung]

A friend changed their phone number, and registered a new Signal account for the new number. I would like to get rid of the old number in my contacts. However, there is still a "Messaging" entry for that friend with the old number, right next to the "Nachrichten" entry with the new number (that's German for "messages", my phone UI is set to be German). I have found no way to delete the old number from the contacts, because the way Signal adds it, Android tells me this is a "read-only account" and I can't change it. I already tried deleting the conversations I had with that friend, to no avail. Note that the old account is still in some groups I am also in, which we can't do anything about since he no longer has access to the old account, and hence can't leave any groups.

This is frustrating. There should be some way to delete/update contacts.

Device info: Motorola E (2nd gen), CM 12.1, Signal v3.1.1

I wouldn't know what to catch a debug log of to document this. If you need further information, please let me know.

[mawed]

Tell your friend to unregister here: https://whispersystems.org/textsecure/unregister/

[RalfJung]

I will. However, he doesn't own the old number anymore, so I don't think that will be possible.

I upgraded to Signal v3.5.0, but found no way to delete a contact there either.

[darryl-grennan]

Preferably there should be a means of doing within Signal exactly what happens if you uninstall and re-install Signal. That is, it removes contact associations and re-associates upon re-install.

There are a lot of ways (deletion/separation) to break the contacts association after they've been created by Signal and a means of recovery and resynchronization needs to somehow be employed here. It breaks too easily.

[2-4601]

#274 with its current title description is the same as this (the comments are not very relevant though)

[KommX]

I also have this problem. Is there anything I can do to get rid off the contact's old number?

[nsturnitin]

I've got this annoying conect that added me and I've not been able to delete this person out of my life. Am I missing something or is there really no ability at this time to remove a contact from showing up as a contact. (I'm using the osx desktop version)

[riyapenn]

Have you tried removing the contact entirely from your Android phone and then steps on the support page: http://support.whispersystems.org/hc/en-us/articles/218514998-How-do-I-update-contacts-on-Signal-Desktop-
Or contact support@whispersystems.org

[only1miller]

Hi! Has there been any development on this? I looked at the instructions for purging contacts from Signal and I just have to believe there's an easier more streamlined process on the way... somthing in the realm of "right click, remove contact" :-)

[nlmunro]

To explain, I have work contacts on my Android, but I don't want to contact them (or perhaps more to the point, I do not want them to contact me) via Signal. I only want people that I choose to add - period.

[Trolldemorted]

@nlmunro I think what you request might be impossible (not literally of course, but impossible enough that it will not happen).

This would require your device to have influence on another person's contact discovery, and iirc contact discovery works by attempting to create a session for every contact in your contact list.

[nlmunro]

Well I don't know the technical details, but I would have thought that allowing the "target" of the discovery to choose if they want to be discovered is pretty important - a bit like accepting a "friend" request except the requester should not even know if I exist. I suppose I could block people, but that risks offending them!

[Trolldemorted]

I can think of no way to forbid clients to establish sessions (while looking "natural") but allowing a set of numbers to do that without having the server maintain that set (and i am pretty sure OWS does not want to do that).

Furthermore i believe that just blocking them should™ look like you have uninstalled signal without unregistering your number (but that requires you to block them before they send the first message. If that is a problem, you could try to convince OWS that it would be reasonable to not send delivery receipts for numbers not in your contact list or you have never responded to).
Your clients could try to establish more than 100 sessions to see if your pre-keys are refilling, but i doubt any of your clients will do that.
Please note that this is a rough guess, i did not have a look on the sourcecode, nor did i ever block anyone, so i suggest you try it out yourself. I also do not know how well Signal-Desktop handles blocked users, it might send delivery receipts which will disclose an active device.

[nlmunro]

Thanks for the background info - though for me this is more of a UX issue. Perhaps I'm unusual, but it just seems odd having contacts added without asking and not being able to remove them.