1d ago

If it ask for your phone number its not private.

Nowadays, a majority of apps require you to sign up with your email or even worse your phone number. If you have a phone number attached to your name, meaning you went to a cell service/phone provider, and you gave them your ID, then no matter what app you use, no matter how private it says it is, it is not private. There is NO exception to this. Your identity is instantly tied to that account.

Signal is not private. I recommend Simplex or another peer to peer onion messaging app. They don't require email or phone number. So as long as you protect your IP you are anonymous

49 comments

Started to write a long paragraph to explain the difference between privacy and anonymity but I now believe this new user is (no idea why) collecting engagement via rage bait. I won't participate in their posts anymore.
It might even come from a good place, namely trying to always do "better" and be "more private" but in practice it's just lead to confusion.
You can use whatever app you like, but I think this adds confusion.
Signal is private because no one can see your messages except the people you are messaging. The government can't, Signal themselves can't.
Signal is not anonymous only in the sense that the government can check if you use Signal. That's it. They can tell if you use Signal. They can't link messages to your number in any way through data requests, etc.
Not forcing anyone to use Signal, but if you choose to, you can know it is private.
(So this post is confusing privacy with anonimity basically)
- Its not private nor is it anonymous.
  
  Try looking up "privacy vs anonimity" (or a similar search query). You may find that your post is talking about anonimity, not privacy.
  Signal is private.
I am a huge fan of SimpleX and their removal of user IDs. I think it's a brilliant solution, and wish that SimpleX was recommended more than Signal.
- If simplex used phone numbers and defeated the whole concept of privacy it would be recommended more.
Thank you! Finally someone that also sees Signal as privacy invasing!
- Don't need an ID to buy a burner phone/number
People dont realize that you may as well hand over your social security number when you pass out your phone number.
- Indeed, I also don't realize that. Please explain further.
  
  Its very easy to dox someone with a phone number. Not sure about social but address and full name are easily available for free.
Yes, phone number should be optional for easy contact discovery, not mandatory. As Threema. You have to provide your ID when buying a sim card.
- Not only that, but self-hosting should be an option. It isn't with signal, which is based and hosted in the US, on amazon servers, and subject to national security letters .
So, late to the party. Me Skuzi. This comment is more targeted towards your responses to user comments, but I would extend that to your entire thesis. So I decided to make an entirely new comment.
Honest questions/comments to follow:
Yes, the US govt can 'compel' a organization such as Signal to allow them to monitor/intercept encrypted messages, The government can even 'compel' a citizen to disclose their encryption key. The cost of non compliance varies from contempt of court to short term incarceration. United States v. Fricosu et al.
However, Signal would only shrug and hand them metadata. Even Signal can't decipher your messages. There are other services unrelated to Signal that operate thusly, such as VPNs, that absolutely do not keep logs and run in RAM only. Some of those VPNs have been raided and servers confiscated by multiple governments with nothing to show for their efforts. If I recall correctly mega.nz and other storage facilities operate along the same lines.
As to the requirement for a phone number, yes they do require a phone number. However, unless they've changed something recently, you can use a free or paid for, burner phone number for verification. The caveat is that if you ever have to recover your account or future verification, you may or may not have access to that number if you used a free service. So, that might be a consideration.
Also, some free services might not work while others will. If signing up for a paid account, burnerapp.com for instance, will allow you to sign up via their website, however you can't use a VPN. WiFi can be acquired at any coffee shop. If you prefer more private methods of payment for these services, there are those that accept crypto.
So, there are 'options.' You just might have to jump through a few hoops to get there.
Secondly, Signal is open source, no? The whole shebang including the protocol is open source. Where might 'they' be putting the backdoor to intercept encrypted messages? I can tell you this, the day the world finds out that the US govt has successfully cracked strong encryption ciphers, is the day you are going to see a lot of movement on this planet. From billion dollar corporations, private entities, governments, and even ne'er-do-wells on Signal.
I'm no 'fanboy', tho there is a lot to be a fan of. I'm not getting any kickbacks, compensation, or monetary advancements. If I need to be schooled, please do share.
Signal does plan to add a paid for service as well as their free service.
- AES256 was broken the day it was released change my mind.
  
  Well, I'm not trying to convince you of anything, however, you can convince me if you'd like. Do you have some substantiating evidence or documentation for such claims? I am aware of improvements to AES256 down through the years, and I am aware of side channel and timing attacks. Not to be discounted, but those are largely theoretical attacks. In addition, most modern computers have mitigated the possibilities of such attacks with hardware instructions for AES to protect against timing-related side-channel attacks.
  The NSA reviewed all the AES finalists, including Rijndael, and reported that all of them were secure enough for U.S. Government non-classified data. However, in June 2003, the U.S. Government announced that AES could be used to protect classified information. Now you could conspiriaze that in 2003, the govt played dumb and said that AES was good enough for classified information when they knew they could blow through it like weak toilet paper, but then again, we (America) are not the only country on the planet despite what some people think, and I am quite certain that other governments have made certain their encryption techniques are 99.999% secure for classified documentation and data.
Signal is private, what you should differentiate is being anonymous or not. Using your usual phone number is NOT Anonymous but is PRIVATE, as in the content of your messages being only available to you and the person you're talking to
The way you get a phone number depends on you too, so you can be very much be Anonymous even if signal requires a phone number.
- the phone number drives me nut since mine changes every few months; everyone i know has my voip number that gets everything forwarded to each new number.
- You are very naive if you think that a company located un the US can provide an encrypted messaging service that can be used by anyone including terrorists, druglords and US enemies without the government being able to access the messages. Lavabit was a famous case and had to shutdown because its founder rejected to comply with an order from the US government to grant access to information. If you are using centralized communication service located in the US forget about privacy.
  ”Lavabit is believed to be the first technology firm that has chosen to suspend or shut down its operation rather than comply with an order from the United States government to reveal information or grant access to information.[3] Silent Circle, an encrypted email, mobile video and voice service provider, followed the example of Lavabit by discontinuing its encrypted email services.[25] Citing the impossibility of being able to maintain the confidentiality of its customers' emails should it be served with government orders, Silent Circle permanently erased the encryption keys that allowed access to emails stored or transmitted by its service.[26]"
  "Levison (founder) explained he was under a gag order and that he was legally unable to explain to the public why he ended the service.[21]"
  
  Email is a very different thing.
  You can't protect against emails being received in plain text.
  Don't know the technicalities of the specific case you are referencing, but I know that if the government wants to they can middleman any received email before the provider can encrypt it for storage on their servers (by forcing the provider to let them).
  On the other hand, if you use an end to end encrypted chat app, you can't middleman any messages from the providers side by force because the messages are always encrypted on the users device before being sent.
  
  Since when is encryption dependent on the service's jurisdiction? When Signal has got subpoenaed it has always been incapable of providing data that involves the content of the conversation https://signal.org/bigbrother/
  The app is also open source with reproducible builds (and you can use Molly instead, if you prefer) and when the clients of an end-to-end encrypted system are sound, that is all that matters to secure the content of the communication.
  Audits are also performed as listed here https://community.signalusers.org/t/overview-of-third-party-security-audits/13243
  I don't understand where this doomerism comes from tbh, (online) privacy will cease to exist when either maths does or it becomes globally illegal to use encryption and the government's intrusion is really so pervasive that they constantly know what you're doing. Luckily we don't yet live in that world, though the pressure is real and we are the first that have to fight for this basic human right
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(network)#History
- People who actually care about privacy: the quality or state of being apart from company or observation (definition), wouldn't want a company knowing their phone number and thus identity tied to their phone number. Maybe you believe in a lower level of privacy than I do. That's fine but my post was for people who never thought about it but will care and those who should care.
  
  Signal doesn't know your phone number, though. It's only used to identify other users in your contacts, and not a single thing about it is stored.
Be specific: what does Signal divilge about me to outsiders besides "I have used Signal"?
- Everyone you talk to and when you talked to them, with their real identities via phone numbers. Because signal is hosted in the US and subject to national security letters, you should assume the worst.
  
  Are you talking about the client app, or about the service?
  Much of what you said doesn't apply to the service, which stores hashed phone numbers and first access / last access times and nothing else.
  And the client does store these things, but also lets users delete messages and contacts. Your message deletions can propagate as well.
- Signal over the past few years has been exposed for having flaws in its security integrity. Even the president's current administration has had a leak issue by using the platform, Signal.
  Once again, they ask for your phone number. Anything they ask for your phone number, if your phone number is tied to your identity, can easily be revealed to reveal who you are.
  
  This is the core of the issue, and it's wild how many people don't get it.
  Your phone number is metadata. And people who think metadata is "just" data or that cross-referencing is some kind of sci-fi nonsense, are fundamentally misunderstanding how modern surveillance works.
  By requiring phone numbers, Signal, despite its good encryption, inherently builds a social graph. The server operators, or anyone who gets that data, can see a map of who is talking to whom. The content is secure, but the connections are not.
  Being able to map out who talks to whom is incredibly valuable. A three-letter agency can take the map of connections and overlay it with all the other data they vacuum up from other sources, such as location data, purchase histories, social media activity. If you become a "person of interest" for any reason, they instantly have your entire social circle mapped out.
  Worse, the act of seeking out encrypted communication is itself a red flag. It's a perfect filter: "Show me everyone paranoid enough to use crypto." You're basically raising your hand.
  So, in a twisted way, Signal being a tool for private conversations, makes it a perfect machine for mapping associations and identifying targets. The fact that it operates using a centralized server located in the US should worry people far more than it seems to.
  The kicker is that thanks to gag orders, companies are legally forbidden from telling you if the feds come knocking for this data. So even if Signal's intentions are pure, we'd never know how the data it collects is being used. The potential for abuse is baked right into the phone-number requirement.
  
  The leak from the administration was because Pete Hegseth included a journalist in a discussion about sensitive war plans. Trying to blame that on Signal is deceptive on your part.
  If you are saying that Signal does not offer anonymity then you are right. Anyone I message on there knows it's me. But Signal is still keeping my messages safe from monitoring and third-party surveillance, to the best of my knowledge.
https://lemmy.world/post/35730511
lol try signing up for an email account today without tying a phone number to it or another established email account. It's incredibly difficult.
You might be able to create an account, but then all "3rd party services" (e.g. creating accounts on absolutely fucking anything) will be blocked and your account will be either restricted or forced to submit a kind of verification that doxes you to lift said block, probably.
I found a single sketchy provider that would take verifications from proton mail that allowed me to then create more accounts, but I had to try over a dozen mail providers before I found the obscure one that did not require any pre-existing accounts, phone numbers or identification documents to just create an email to simply sign up for any web forum, service or basically do anything most people do with email. Everything ends up linked to each other at some point.
There's just no privacy anymore. The ones who think there is are probably not as private as they really think they are today.
- Protonmail is highly accepted and tutamail didn't ask for my number or another email. You are in a group called privacy but you think there is no privacy?
  I just stop using those accounts that force me to give up my number. It's called standards, YOU must have them and you will have more privacy than most.
  This group function is to help increase privacy. That's what I'm doing by letting you know not to use your phone number. If you have a defeatist ideology. You lose.
  
  Protonmail is highly accepted
  Sure, requires 3rd party email or cell phone to work though.
  tutamail didn’t ask for my number or another email
  The last one, run by little over a dozen people as FOSS, and easily quashed by the long arm of the law or a pricey lawsuit. What happens then?
  I just stop using those accounts that force me to give up my number. It’s called standards
  You still need an email that is completely associated to you for official things like medical interactions, government interactions, and stuff like sports tickets if you care about going to a sports game in a town like Boston. Hell, when you send resumes I assume you have a professional inbox for that too.
  So how do you do it? Do you live in two worlds with a burner phone / never checking your 'private' stuff outside of some kind of proxy/vpn scenario where you remote into whatever box is handling your actual private online presence?
- Tutamail is the only service I know of that still doesn't need anything but I don't expect it to last. Email providers that don't make you verify anything end up being used for spam and then websites just start blocking their domain from being used for account creation

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