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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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Why do you think they (and Signal) require phone numbers?
Doesn’t signal allow signups without a phone now?
Also second SimpleX that the other person mentioned.
No, it gives usernames in addition to phone numbers. They refuse to remove the phone number requirement. How else could they help the feds identify your account?
AFAIK signal stil requires a phone numer for registration, however you now can add people by their username.
In terms of end-to-end encryption I don’t mind if they have my phone number or not, if it’s done right.
Let’s use signal for example, because honestly they do it pretty decently, the most information that you can obtain from signal in a data information request is the date and time that an account is created, and the last time the account went online.
Actual content such as the user’s contact list, the people that user was talking with(including groups), and of course the messages that you sent are fully end to end encrypted meaning that signal does not have access to it meaning that they cannot give that information out in a data information request as they never had it in the first place.
The most that signal is able to confirm in a data information request, is yes this specific account ID has a signal account and this is the last time they went online.
Are you mad? The phone number tells you what phone company to call. In most countries, that tells them your name and government ID.
The phone number is the thing that tells them everything about you.
If somebody is that paranoid (or in a situation where that level of secrecy is necessary) they would not use a number that is traceable to them… So it doesn’t matter if they have your phone number or not.
Most people live in countries where they cannot legally buy phone numbers that are not traceable to them
Check your privilege.
You wouldn’t concern yourself with the legality, if your threat vector includes the traceability of the phone number.
And regarding your (in this context) nonsensical privilege remark: I live in such a country. Yet I have used such numbers.
Some people don’t break the law
and what is that going to give them? The information that they have is yes, they have an account, and that’s also saying that they used an actual number and not a VOIP number for registration. but if they are asking via phone number, they will already have that information at hand. They won’t get any information about what chats that number is part of, or even any info really at all, anything about the account is encrypted and not visible.
If they are able to provide my phone number without knowing the info you said there, there is some other leak already involved, and either way they won’t get anything but a “yes he has an account and he was last connected on X”
SimpleX
I’ve been calling this out for years.
And every time, some commenter goes, “Nu uh, look at their website bro! It’s super private!”
Nuh uh! We’ve been telling people to avoid Telegram and Signal for years!