I ended up wanting an online pseudonymous identity as well as an offline real-life identity, which leads to needing multiple phone numbers when things are tied to said number. That's extremely annoying to manage, especially with Signal's current activity and update policies that essentially require you to keep a phone in a drawer, charge it and log into it every so often or risk losing your entire account due to inactivity, as only the mobile device counts for that purpose (this might supposedly be changing).

In that particular scenario, I don't really care if my least-favorite three-letter-agency or law enforcement can link my identities. It's a nice bonus if they can't, but not an absolutely required feature. The main worry is the person on the other end trivially learning it. But the person on the other end might have a different set of worries that makes Signal one of the few available options for them.

That said, Telegram also requires a phone number and has exactly the same issue, so this is a rather weird thread to bring that up.

I would assume if an entity had my phone number they could easily connect it to me, like by spoofing it and calling themselves and getting the name off caller id or some shit, or even just subpoenaing the phone carrier for the id of the phone number. Why they would want to do that for little old fudgy mctubbs is beyond me.

I'll say it: I dont want anybody to know what I jack off to. It's all legal stuff, but im too prudish to have that be public.

Anonymity is impossible, but we can still attempt it.