Live data from Hacker News

You can change your number

signal.org

351–360 of 410 posts

Re: You can change your number

#351
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

That would be a really nice option now that you mention it. Like a "fresh start" where you could pick who can actually see that you're on signal especially with a new number/phone. Lots of people are often a negative in your life.

I don’t think they can do this - it feels like it would require a central contact database with an extra setting for that.

But who knows, the private contact discovery is quite magical so maybe there’s a way….

https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/

Re: You can change your number

#352
post #259

With SIM swapping, does using a phone number mean someone can takeover your Signal account?

You can turn on Registration Lock which requires the PIN if you "re-register" with signal again.

So, for most people, who wouldn't think to take extra precautions for Signal specifically, the answer would be yes?

Re: You can change your number

#353
post #27
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…

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

A cryptocurrency scam isn't super reputable IMO.

Re: You can change your number

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the problem your parent is referring to is that you have the same username in every chat. Discord really suffers from this.

Actually there are two main problems I'm referring to. You identified one of them. If I want to stay anonymous, I'm really asking how to compartmentalize chats and groups of people. We have different identities with different groups and use different names with them. The other problem is actually the act of sharing a username. If my username is "godelski" then yeah, I can share it on HN and Reddit where I use that us…

Instead of 1 1-click link, make it a handshake, 2 1-click links:

1. Godelski shares 1-click link with Brigandish.

2. Brigandish clicks link and that registers Brigandish's Signal account with Godelski's Signal account, but no communication can take place yet.

3. Brigandish shares 1-click link with Godelski.

4. Godelski clicks the link, if Godelski has a registration waiting for Brigandish's Signal account then the handshake is complete.

I came up with this right now, I'm sure someone else can find a problem with it beyond it being a tad more bothersome than usual.

Re: You can change your number

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unfortunate that they seem to be going for user created username. I’d rather have something like ~hkopy-vnhyt randomly generated and given to users with option to try for another randomly generated username if they didn’t like the first.

Nobody is stopping you from doing that for yourself.

Well the username "~hkopy-vnhyt" would be invalid because they only allow case insensitive a-z, digits and _ underscores.

I can see some reasoning, but there's technically nothing stopping them from allowing more universal ASCII characters at the very least.

Re: You can change your number

#356
post #346

This is an important addition. My request list would be from easier to harder: - Strong anonymity - Offline and cloud encrypted backups that can be imported to the new IDs (also potential monetization source) - Secondary IDs per user and one off IDs, with the nature of said IDs communicated to the other party (primary, secondary permanent, one off). Of course it could create problems but with a proper blocking mechan…

I would love to move the backup off my device. It is eating my storage but I also don't want to delete it!

Re: You can change your number

#358
post #231
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it advertise your username? If I don't have the name of the contact, will Signal share my username or does it just say "this number in your list has joined signal, and here is their profile?"

My understanding is that your profile username is made visible if: - the person is in your own contact list - you create a conversation with them - you accept a conversation from them see: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007459591

You also see people's username when they are in the same group conversation as them (and they are not in your contact list).

That's what I observe by using Axolotl on the phone and Signal Desktop on the computer.

Re: You can change your number

#359
post #330

I stopped using Signal, along with my adult tech-oriented friends, when we all had bad experiences migrating our accounts to new phones. That plus the phone number requirement, intrusive contacts integration, and the weird crypto side projects killed my interest in Signal entirely. My friends and I use Discord now.

Discord is not end to end encrypted, and Discord, along with whoever buys them, will receive the complete plaintext message history of all of your conversations with those friends.

Yup, and I don’t care. If I ever organize a protest I’ll do it on Signal, or another end-to-end encrypted platform. For daily banter I’ll use whatever a majority of my friends prefer. That’s currently Discord for the above-mentioned reasons.

Re: You can change your number

#360
post #341
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the old 'I don't need privacy because I have nothing to hide' fallacy.

I have nothing to hide because I recognize the intentions and limitations of different platforms. Discord is a gaming chat platform and I post and act accordingly there. I don't understand why I should be entitled to privacy on a free chat platform hosted with someone else's money.

This is fine. But you are talking about Discord as a replacement for Signal, in a thread about Signal and it's privacy model.
Post reply on HN