this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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Privacy
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I don't get it at all. There are plenty of platforms like matrix, xmpp, simplex that don't require phone numbers tied to your identity. Signal has somehow managed to convince people that it's a private platform, despite it being a US hosted service that requires phone numbers.
Say the US government, in a worst-case scenario in which it constantly monitors all traffic that goes through Signal’s data centers, can ‘only' see phone numbers, IP addresses and timestamps, right? Or am I forgetting something here?
Metadata and social graphs are more important than message content, esp since not many people have the time to read through individual messages to build meaning.
Signal stores phone numbers (meaning your identity, and home address), and message timestamps: who texted who and when, and who's in chats with who else. More than enough to build social graphs and connections, and also figure out where people are through their IP addresses.
Right. So arguably better than WhatsApp, where each users’ contact books, profile photos, bios, and each group chat name, picture and description is not E2E. But to call it ‘private’ is not logical, looking at the alternatives, of which some are much more private.