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You can change your number

signal.org

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61–70 of 410 posts

Re: You can change your number

#61

Post by sgarman »

tapoxi wrote: post #51
usea wrote: post #8

How can I use this without a phone or phone number at all? If I am concerned about privacy, why would I give them that access and information when it's not necessary for the service? Surely they are only trying to gather information on their users. Whether it's being sold, breached, or used for ad targeting, I am not interested. It comes across as a scam. I cannot take seriously any claims made by the company or its…

They're working on usernames, but what's the privacy concern around using your phone number? Is it to be pseudononymous? My use case for Signal is friends and family, and it was easy to get everyone onboard because we all have each other's phone numbers already and didn't need to build a new list of contacts. It's a drop-in Android-compatible replacement for iMessage.

Personally I don't have a privacy issue with it per se but I have two phones, one is data only sim and I can't use signal on that device with their current model. I guess because the device is a "phone" whatever that means. If they do away with this reliance on phone numbers hopefully we could get something more flexible that allows me to use it on "phones" without phone numbers.

Re: You can change your number

#62

Post by wyager »

Vinnl wrote: post #2

> We built Change Number using the foundation of more exciting features to come. Surely this is referring to the ability to use a non-phone number ID, which they've hinted at before [1]. Looking forward to that, only because I know many others are! [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/kt91qk/comment/...

Based on the whole "mobilecoin" pump and dump scam they tried to pull, I unfortunately expect this to be tied to some kind of identity shitcoin.

Re: You can change your number

#63

Post by tptacek »

charcircuit wrote: post #37
tptacek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're great compared to the alternative of simply storing a plaintext register of every pair of communicating parties on the server, which is how other messengers work. What's "good" about phone numbers is that they're tied clientside to a "buddy list" that everyone already keeps --- their contact list. They don't want phone numbers on the merits of phone numbers.

I've never used a contact list for my "buddies." We just have each other added on Discord.

Discord works by keeping a serverside database of which people are talking to which people, which is, to a serious adversary, the most valuable single piece of information the service can cough up. Discord is much, much more convenient than Signal, and that's good. The services have different goals.

Re: You can change your number

#64

Post by wyager »

usea wrote: post #8

How can I use this without a phone or phone number at all? If I am concerned about privacy, why would I give them that access and information when it's not necessary for the service? Surely they are only trying to gather information on their users. Whether it's being sold, breached, or used for ad targeting, I am not interested. It comes across as a scam. I cannot take seriously any claims made by the company or its…

Check out Wired; it's a signal clone, but they don't require phone numbers (just emails) and it seems to be built a lot better in many ways (e.g. allowing multiple accounts on one device).

Re: You can change your number

#65

Post by rhn_mk1 »

tapoxi wrote: post #51
usea wrote: post #8

How can I use this without a phone or phone number at all? If I am concerned about privacy, why would I give them that access and information when it's not necessary for the service? Surely they are only trying to gather information on their users. Whether it's being sold, breached, or used for ad targeting, I am not interested. It comes across as a scam. I cannot take seriously any claims made by the company or its…

They're working on usernames, but what's the privacy concern around using your phone number? Is it to be pseudononymous? My use case for Signal is friends and family, and it was easy to get everyone onboard because we all have each other's phone numbers already and didn't need to build a new list of contacts. It's a drop-in Android-compatible replacement for iMessage.

> the privacy concern around using your phone number

You have to give up your anonymity to get one in many places.

Re: You can change your number

#66

Post by advisedwang »

yusmary wrote: post #45

All that is cool, but I don't want Signal to advertise my presence to anybody that has my phone number when I first log in after a fresh install. I have only a handful of people that know and we negotiated that face to face prior, Signal breaks that trust

Can you explain this a bit more? Am I correct in understanding that you feel it hurts you when your contacts find out that you have signal installed, hence why signal shouldn't do it? What is the impact of someone who has your phone number knowing you are available over Signal?

Are there communities out there where someone being on signal is a red flag?

Re: You can change your number

#67

Post by scotty79 »

Why would supposedly secure communicator use actual phone number as identifier is beyond me.

And everybody does that, either phone number or email.

The only software I could find for anonymous communication was old Polish communicator http://gg.pl which uses arbitrary numbers as identifiers

I understand that startups are scared that they won't be able to build up userbase from scratch but come on! Discord and Slack did it.

Re: You can change your number

#68

Post by doc_gunthrop »

caslon wrote: post #43
charcircuit wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never used a contact list for my "buddies." We just have each other added on Discord.

Discord keeps your friend information on their servers. This is, like tptacek said, exactly what Signal is trying to prevent. If servers get seized by the Feds, they don't want to needlessly reveal who's contacting who for everyone. It's about storing as little personal information as they can.

Not only do they keep your friend information on their servers, they maintain a copy of every single message you've ever sent via Discord. Their service is the antithesis of private communications.

Re: You can change your number

#69

Post by kypro »

yusmary wrote: post #45

All that is cool, but I don't want Signal to advertise my presence to anybody that has my phone number when I first log in after a fresh install. I have only a handful of people that know and we negotiated that face to face prior, Signal breaks that trust

If you want to change your number and for no body to know it sounds like you could still do that, you'll just have to create a new account.
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