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The only reason I don't use Signal is because it still uses your phone number for ID. What is even the point of verifying by number?
by redrobein 6y ago
The only reason I don't use Signal is because it still uses your phone number for ID. What is even the point of verifying by number?
- ciarannolan 6y agoI think they justify sacrificing privacy like this for the sake of growth (which of my contacts use Signal? etc).
- aaomidi 6y agoThey could at least do what Telegram does and hide the phone numbers by default and have a username system as well.
- harry8 6y agoUsers a phone number. Doesn't have to be your main number. Setup with a burner sim and throw it away.
- patcon 6y agoit's their negotiation of the bare minimum invasive activity they've decided they must do to give us some threshold of network effects in an otherwise anonymous service
- bilal4hmed 6y agoThey are working to remove the cell phone requirement. https://signal.org/blog/signal-pins/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-pins/ "PINs will also help facilitate new features like addressing that isn’t based exclusively on phone numbers, since the system address book will no longer be a viable way to maintain your network of contacts."
- false-mirror 6y agoI believe the point was that phone numbers are already used as unique IDs people know intuitively. Essentially make it quick to onboard new users Thankfully they are moving away from this with the option to use a PIN instead pf phone #. Not sure when that rolls out, but I'm v. excited for it
- Joeboy 6y agoI suspect you are massively outnumbered by people who do use it because it integrates with their existing phone book, and is a drop-in replacement for the default SMS app. Without those things it'd be just another niche app for weird nerds.
- throwaway2048 6y agothere is a difference between making it possible to use phone numbers and making it a hard, unavoidable requirement.
- tfehring 6y agoThe fact that you can reliably add Signal users using only their phone number is a feature for the users who don't care about that level of anonymity, though apparently not a feature the developers care about preserving.
- pavon 6y agoIf it didn't have this feature of being a drop-in replacement for SMS, then I would be using Matrix to communicate with my two privacy-minded friends, and plain-text SMS to talk to everyone else in my contact list. With this feature, I've been able to convince about half of my Android-using contacts into switching (iOS is a harder sell).
- marssaxman 6y agoThe whole point of Signal as far as I have ever been concerned was to encrypt one's SMS communications. How would you do that without a phone number?