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Why does Signal want a phone number to register if it's supposedly privacy first? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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I remember a time when visiting a website that opens a javacript dialog box asking for your name so the message "hi " could be displayed was baulked at.

Why does signal want a phone number to register? Is there a better alternative?

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[–] -3 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

The claim is that Signal's phone verification step doesn't cause privacy problems because Signal (purportedly) doesn't retain the phone numbers after verification. That claim is falsified because the phone carrier stores the call record even if Signal doesn't. They store it because of the same law that makes them turn it over to Big Brother on demand. The phone verification step is, therefore, a privacy problem. Obviously there are similar issues with IP routing, but at least I can use a VPN with an endpoint in another country.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    No, that wasn't the claim. Phone numbers are used for sign up, but the post's OP was talking about messaging meta data. Messaging meta data doesn't go through your carrier and is encrypted.

    If you check the publication of signal's cases where they had to hand out data, and in reverse the FBI leak that listed analysis of all messenger apps by what data they were able to acquire in most cases, Signal came out as one of the top options.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The "record" is a SMS verification code. All that will tell the government is that you registered for Signal, nothing else.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Telling the govt that you registered for Signal sounds like a bad failure as far as I'm concerned, e.g. if you are a user in a repressive regime. Do you think Trump would like to get his hands on a list of all the Signal users in the US? Probably yes. What would he do with the list? IDK but it has to be bad. So it should be an objective of Signal to make it impossible for anyone to create such a list.

    Anyway, it sounds like Signal has wised up and is getting rid of the phone number requirement. I don't understand why people here keep defending the misfeature. I've heard such things explained as "system justification" but I still don't understand it. All of us make poor decisions all the time, but we should at least make some effort to recognize them, and fix them when possible.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_justification

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