this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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Privacy
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Telegram: We keep you private. Now enter your phone number to sign up.
Signal does the same
You still need a phone number to register an account as far as I could tell when I did the other day. You no longer need to share your number with any contacts and can set it so noone who has your number can look you up on signal. You can optionally set a unique alphanumeric 'username' instead to hand to people to look you up. But yea, Signal still requires you to give them and their authenticatian service (through sms code) your phone number.
Np
Are there any equivalents that don't need a phone number?
Yes, XMPP, a long-standing protocol that's also not a walled garden, doesn't require a phone number or even a phone. For android I use the Conversations client combined with Dino on computers. Currently logged in to a handful of devices synchronously. You can choose what server to make an account on; conversations.im I found to be reliable. Drawback is Signal doesn't let you bridge to it from anywhere outside of Signal. So I have accounts on both.
It is
That breaks anonymity, not privacy
You mean "confidentiality", not privacy.
Just the metadata related to whether you personally, traceable to your full name and address, have a Signal account and how much you use it might be considered a privacy breach already, even if the content of the messages is confidential.
It breaks both
Signal is the same in that regards.
Was
Signal still requires a phone number to use it. What they recently added is the ability to message people without needing to know their phone number.
Oh, that sucks. My bad.