STOP asking for my phone number to use your "secure" app.
I don't want to disclose my phone number to any user, platform or any app.
Just please STOP.
You can change your number
71–80 of 410 posts
Re: You can change your number
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have data on that, or are you just asserting that your personal experience is more universal than their personal experience? I don't think they're totally off-base: I haven't used my phone contact list for personal contacts for most of the last decade. It's just a collection of work contacts that I don't trust enough to add anywhere I actually talk to people.
I'm sorry but do you need data for common sense? Is WhatsApp one of the biggest messaging platforms where people don't talk to their close friends and family? You think discord or other mediums are more popular than iMessage and WhatsApp?
I mean, I guess I do? I'm legitimately unsure if I'm in some weird bubble where no one uses WhatsApp or you're in a bubble of unusually high usage. But it's been a small enough part of my life that I'm not even fully sure what the connection is. It uses your contact list as well?
Re: You can change your number
#73All 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
This is why I hate any service that uses a phone number as an ID.
I use a virtual number for Signal and any such services, and it's a different virtual number than the one I give to humans.
Re: You can change your number
#74All 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
How do you reconcile this with the ability to see, when you start to message someone, if they're using signal?
Can't a person who wants to know if you are on signal do so simply by starting a message to you?
Are you suggesting that simply making this less convenient on the client will somehow discourage someone who is determined to figure this out about you?
Re: You can change your number
#75All 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?
This is just a shade away from the typical "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument, and is in my opinion equally invalid.
Let people decide for themselves what in their lives is OK to share with others. You don't need to know the reason why.
Re: You can change your number
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can use wire instead
Exactly. Why on earth is it so hard or difficult for Signal to do just that? Regardless, I don't know why they are pushing in a somewhat unregulated, volatile cryptocurrency that will be used by extremists, terrorists and the like who in no doubt will not only use it to fund their activities and will be sitting in their group chats but now they can change their phone numbers to hide even further? The road to hell is…
This has been discussed literally 1000 times.
The alternative is having the server know who is talking to whom. Further, phone numbers provide a valuable bootstrap to connect with people.
Other secure messengers have chosen a different design than Signal. This means you can choose the one you prefer.
Re: You can change your number
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry but do you need data for common sense? Is WhatsApp one of the biggest messaging platforms where people don't talk to their close friends and family? You think discord or other mediums are more popular than iMessage and WhatsApp?
I mean, I guess I do? I'm legitimately unsure if I'm in some weird bubble where no one uses WhatsApp or you're in a bubble of unusually high usage. But it's been a small enough part of my life that I'm not even fully sure what the connection is. It uses your contact list as well?
Supposedly two billion users as of Feb 2020: https://web.archive.org/web/20200212142339/https://blog.what...
Re: You can change your number
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I'm surprised, after a decade stating that phone numbers were great for ID.
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.
This is not the only alternative though.
Re: You can change your number
#79How 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.
If I'd be a spying agency I'd do just that - develop "secure" app that would collect unique identity of every user. Verified phone number is a perfect unique ID.
"Just give your phone number to us, and don't worry, we won't share it with anyone!".
That exactly what Signal does.
Until they allow user-created ID's with no link to any identity - the above concern stays.
Re: You can change your number
#80Great update. Patiently waiting until the day I can decouple my phone number from my Signal "account" though.