Itâs about your posture. Most people who use signal use it to have privacy from governments. Theyâre not hiding that they use signal, theyâre hiding what they write on signal. In this case, using your phone number isnât a big deal.
Some people, have a tighter posture, which could translate to your position. In that case, something like Briar could fit the bill.
Lastly, security and privacy are not the same thing. Google products are secure, but they are not private. Self hosted sftp, for example, is private, but may not be secure. Signal is definitely secure, at least enough for general and governmental use. So, it seems, is telegram. Signal is more private than telegram in many ways, but it is not the gold standard for privacy (because of its use of phone numbers as usernames), but it is âgood enoughâ for the masses. The balance between good for everyone and zero-knowledge private for everyone is delicate, potentially impossible. Honestly, I donât know if signal was able to strike that balance perfectly, but they did a much better job than many other services, certainly than those others that are accepted by the masses.
But putting a phone number in immediately exposes protesters to association. Sure, Signal canât give out the contents of messages, but it still has the chain of contact. So if a government gets hold of this record, legally or otherwise, now you have everyone associated to a suspect phone number/person and can start rounding them up.
Itâs the complete antithesis of freedom of association when thereâs a record of everyone that youâve contacted. The contents donât enter into that problem, and I canât see why they feel the need to keep this as part of their system. It purposely makes it impossible to use this for something like peaceful protest. So, no, it doesnât give you privacy from governments, because governments that donât respect freedom of association will use that information to punish dissidents.
I canât imagine any reason to use phone numbers except to purposefully keep this chain of association for governments to use. Even Facebook doesnât require this sort of personal proof, and itâs suspicious as hell.
Sure, Signal canât give out the contents of messages, but it still has the chain of contact.
it doesnât. theyâve been ordered to hand over data multiple times, and the only thing tied to the phone number they have is 1. time the account has been created and 2. last time the account connected to the server: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
Youâre mistaken on the basis of your beliefs here. Signal only had two pieces of data around your phone number (joined datestamp, last online datestamp). This means that governments canât petition signal for any more information, since signal simply doesnât have it to give (by design).
Your point on fb is hilarious, because they do require it. They just donât require you to input it, because (1) they already have it and (2) you freely provide the missing pieces without them even asking. But, like I said earlier, if this goes against your posture, use something like Briar or Matrix or whatever. Choice exists, because everyone is different and has different postures.
