This shows the absurd ignorance of many people (including security experts and even Snowden himself!) on using messaging apps that are based on phone number. As

This shows the absurd ignorance of many people (including security experts and even Snowden himself!) on using messaging apps that are based on phone number. As stated many times, there are limited number of phone numbers possible for every country, so even if the database only consists of some sort of hash value instead of the number itself, the system is vulnerable to identity theft and user identification. Practically in any country governments have a database of people's phone number (correlated to their social security numbers, banking info used to pay the bills, street addresses and even IMEI,MAC address of the devices they used or bought for that account). I wish someone could tell me why an app like Telegram or even Signal (which both make many claims on their encryption capabilities and are endorsed by activists) are based on such fundamental security flaw!