4 ms·
Requiring a phone number means you have to disclose your identity (in many countries, for example in Russia) and your physical location (everywhere). This is th
by codedokode 8y ago
Requiring a phone number means you have to disclose your identity (in many countries, for example in Russia) and your physical location (everywhere). This is the opposite to privacy and anonimity.
Imagine, one of your contacts is captured; attackers get his contact list that includes you; then they get your phone number from Signal; then they get your location and put you to all kinds of black lists, extremists lists, no fly lists, watch lists and so on.
Signal is nothing better than Telegram. They should be on the same position.
- lvh 8y agoThat equivalence does not follow. The counterpoint is simple: can people figure out how to get burner numbers? Yes, they can: there are a myriad of services for doing so. And, importantly: journalists already know how.
- vader1 8y agoIn many countries it's not (legally) possible to buy a SIM card without providing your ID. Sure, you go ahead and buy an illegal burner number, then download Signal/Whatsapp from the Play Store and reverse engineer that binary to see if it "does what it says". Other people might find it useful to look at this comparison to discover alternatives that better fit the characteristics they find important.
- lvh 8y agoI know; I lived in one. A burner number does not imply getting a SIM. That is not how journos in sensitive countries get a number.
- codedokode 8y agoFirst, that leaves a trace: location where you used that number to connect to GSM network (ok, there are also services receiving messages for you). Second, this is inconvenient: if you change your IP address or log out, the server will require you to provide a SMS code.
- lvh 8y agoWhat? No, SMS is not a reauth factor in Signal, and the number doesn’t have to be physically proximate to you: you just have to receive a text message on it once.
- dfox 8y agoWhen you compare Signal with Telegram on this axis you actually end up with Telegram being "safer". Because while Telegram needs phone number for initial registration you can just throw the SIM away after that (how to get anonnymous SIM capable of receiving SMS is left as an excercise for the reader, but I believe that getting reasonably anonymous burner SIM for this single use is possible and even easy anywhere in the world, with the extreme approach being "borrowing" it from some random IoT device) as the authorization of new devices occurs in-band.