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You can change your number

signal.org

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Re: You can change your number

#91

Post by vmception »

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

At this point I just pay for an additional line since VOIP numbers are being discriminated against. So just a few people will have that number.

On the other side of associating me with people, I'm also looking for an Apple iOS update that lets me upload just some contacts, when an app asks.

Re: You can change your number

#92

Post by tptacek »

theamk wrote: post #54
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.

This decision seems pretty crazy to me, especially on the cell phones where a lot of apps require phone book access to function, and there is generally no way to give a different view to different apps. I understand that Signal wants to be blame it all on users, but the practical consequence of their design is that the moment people want to talk to a single person on Whatsapp, they give out Signal contact list to Fac…

Signal having the contact list means that they'd be subject to legal (and extralegal) process to obtain the entire contact list for everybody using the service, which is untenable for them. Again: Signal is not Discord or WhatsApp; these are different services with different primary objectives.

Re: You can change your number

#93

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

Re: You can change your number

#94

Post by stjohnswarts »

theamk wrote: post #59
caslon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Question: do you use Signal? If yes, are you backing up/syncing your contact list? If yes, are you worried about Feds coming for your backup/sync provider?

Isn't your contact list encrypted? I mean wouldn't they have to hack my password (good luck) to do that?

Re: You can change your number

#95

Post by palata »

iratewizard wrote: post #35
its_bbq wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is about as reputable as you can get for e2e encrypted chat

Signal is high up, but matrix is higher in my book.

Genuinely interested: can you elaborate on what metadata the matrix servers have access to? Say, don't they know who I am writing to, when and which groups I belong to?

Signal does not, and that's guaranteed by the client code (i.e. no need to trust anything on the server for that).

Re: You can change your number

#96

Post by enriquto »

advisedwang wrote: post #66
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?

> What is the impact of someone who has your phone number knowing you are available over Signal?

Don't know about Signal, but Whatsapp does the same thing (advertise to your contacts that you have a whatsapp account) and I find it extremely offensive.

Context: I am an ardent anti-whatsapp activist, thus I don't have a whatsapp account. This activism has created quite a stir in my family and made a lot of people angry, yet I stick about it. I have forced many of my close family and friends to use a different communication channel with me, and I have lost the contact of quite a few acquaintances. When my dad died a few months ago, her wife needed to talk to me (and I needed to talk to her quite a lot). She was not really in the mood for listening to my techno-activism platitudes, and I was not in the mood to perform them, so I had to open a whatsapp account. Since all the people who I had forced to stop using whatsapp to talk to me would have felt alienated by this at this point, I needed to take a new phone number to talk to my stepmom via whatsapp.

This is a concrete example of why advertising the fact that I have a whatsapp account is an extremely annoying anti-feature. I'm sure there are similarly legitimate reasons for disliking the same feature in Signal. In any case, for a platform that has the privacy of users as one of its main tenets, this is a clear-cut case of anti-privacy feature. I can imagine reasonable people avoiding Signal precisely for this.

Re: You can change your number

#97

Post by einpoklum »

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

Yeah, those announcements on Signal and Telegram are super-annoying and awkward.

You draw the attention of people with whom you have perhaps decided to let the relationship cool, and suddenly: "Hey, [YOURNAME] is here! Remember him? And how you have unfinished business? Why don't you message him right now?" :-(

Re: You can change your number

#98

Post by SonicShell »

advisedwang wrote: post #66
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?

people i know irl commented "oh nice are you buying weed?" when they saw i joined, its really stupid for an app thats about privacy to do that.

Re: You can change your number

#99

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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