this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2025
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Privacy
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This is kind of useless fear-mongering suited to no one's threat model.
Are messages truly E2EE and they don't share meta data? Yes? Then you're fine. It needs a phone number for registration? OK, well buy a burner SIM card (you of course have several, right?) to register it if you're that worried. Because if you're already at a level where you're THAT concerned about your phone number pinging for using a widely popular messaging app, then you have lost the game by even having a phone or sending messages to other humans who are the weakest link in the security chain anyway.
Considering that the Feds tried to make some government-compliant front end for Signal for idiot Hegseth to use to talk about national security stuff with the Vice President, I'd say that it's probably fine for you to buy weed or whatever.
I'll add that if someone knowing your phone number is an actual threat to your safety, you should already know better about using something more anonymous.
Privacy ≠ anonymity
Illegal in many countries. SIM cards are attached to your real world identity.
And we shouldn't depend on such archaic highly centralized technology like phone numbers from techinical perspective either, it is only like this because it is deeply entrenched and a very easily a suprisingly reliable form of identification and deanomization
Signal has too many red flags, but the biggest one is phone numbers and SIM cards. No application that wants to be secure against nation state spying relies on these.