Keep your phone number private with Signal usernames
signal.org
Signal’s mission and sole focus is private communication. For years, Signal has kept your messages private, your profile information (like your name and profile photo) private, your contacts private, and your groups private – among much else. Now we’re taking that one step further, by making your...
    • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
      0·
      9 months ago

      A number is still needed to register I believe.

      Indeed, which makes their headline a bit misleading. Giving Signal your phone number is not keeping it private.

      • PersonalDevKit@aussie.zone
        0·
        9 months ago

        I thought peoples big problem with it was not wanting to give others their number to use signal? Like I meet Joe Blog online and don’t want to give him my real number to chat.

        Less people worried that signal had their number?

        • fuzzzerd@programming.dev
          0·
          9 months ago

          Seems the second group is a vocal minority. This feature helps the first group, but doesn’t help the second group.

          According to Signal, the first group is the larger group and this helps the most users of Signal.

          Could it be better? Sure. This is still a good step in terms of privacy, even though it doesn’t really improve anonymity.

          • preasket@lemy.lol
            0·
            9 months ago

            Personally, I care about the phone number requirement not because I don’t want to reveal it to Signal servers, but because it limits access to Signal for people in countries that block their SMS service - registration messages just don’t arrive

            • XTornado@lemmy.ml
              1·
              9 months ago

              It’s specific to signal? Like they want to block people registering or what’s up with that SMS block?

  • JoYo@lemmy.mlEnglish
    01·
    9 months ago

    omg so cool right? they finally invented usernames. IRC is jealous.