Privacy

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Why does Signal want a phone number to register if it's supposedly privacy first? (programming.dev)

submitted 5 days ago by 0101100101@programming.dev to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I remember a time when visiting a website that opens a javacript dialog box asking for your name so the message "hi " could be displayed was baulked at.

Why does signal want a phone number to register? Is there a better alternative?

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[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

You are talking out of your ass. First, a timing attack requires numbers to correlate - reasonable numbers of people using a node or server and a LOT of packets going back and forth. Neither are true for a Signal server. Second, they don’t get the phone numbers if contacts are using only their username (with phone number sharing disabled). Your criticisms are over the top and not at all nuanced to the degree of protection of metadata that was built into signal. If it was as bad as you imply, a whole heck of a lot of the most respected security researchers would have to be complete idiots.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 hours ago

Lol, confidently saying stuff you obviously have no idea about and just believing Signal's "trust me bro" nonsense. Have fun using that honeypot.

(Those "security researchers" you are referring to have no access to the Signal infrastructure and usually only look at the cryptographic algorithms used by Signal, which are indeed good and used by other systems as well these days).