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Refusing to use Signal: "I have too many messaging apps" (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Not sure if any of you have encountered the same resistance to using Signal. Some of my cousins refused to use Signal because they are already using "too many chat apps" (e.g. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Telegram, Line, Snapchat, etc.). To them, Signal will just be another chat app among their numerous other chat apps. I understand that jumping between so many messaging apps imposes some kind of cognitive and maintenance burden. What are some ways to convince such people to use Signal?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (6 children)

So why do they only allow users to signup to Signal with a phone number? If they really were about privacy and security, they should allow signups via username+password only.

There so much money to be made for just knowing who is talking to who. Who is using the app and when. Even if they can't get at the content of your messages.

I don't trust them one bit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (4 children)

You confuse privacy and security with anonymity, they are different things. Also, with the sealed senders option, the sender are hidden.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

The person I'm talking to is allowed to know who I am so I'm not anonymous. Signal doesn't need to know who I am. It doesn't matter what you call it, that's the feature I'm waiting for to motivate a switch.

That said, I looked up sealed senders. They really do go above and beyond to end2end encrypt as much as they possibly can.

It's just a shame that they insist so hard to tie user accounts to phone numbers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Signal doesn't know who you are. A number don't reveal your identity, and, usually, you should be just a gov. entities to discover that. Does matter what you call it: Signal is for privacy (they have your number, but they don't know who you are, who you write and what you write), not for (full) anonymity (they don't have any information, including number, on you).

Anyway, they're implementing the username too.

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