Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Signal needs a phone number. Why are we dismissing this as privacy versus anonymity when governments are blocking the registration SMS? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by autonomoususer@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I really don’t get why so many people are turning this into a privacy versus anonymity debate when the real problem is censorship.

Yes, Signal needs a phone number to sign up, but replacing that with an email or username doesn’t make it anonymous. The real issue is that governments are blocking the registration SMS, so people can’t even sign up for the app in the first place.

Sure, there are workarounds, but most people aren’t going to jump through all those extra hoops just to use an app. If we want to spread privacy, how do we do that when Signal's phone number requirement is actively working against us?

Instead of arguing over privacy versus anonymity, shouldn’t we focus on making sure everyone can access Signal without issues? What do you think?

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[–] iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

How about this - in order to get a sim card to receive that SMS in most EU countries, you need first to provide your ID to the goverment. Also applies for many other countries with less rights. Some of which might become suspicious if it's a second separate SIM to your normal use one. So yeah, so much for anonymity.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That didn't answer my question
Doesn't matter what country you're in. You don't need a SIM. All you need is a number, which you can get from a variety of places like MySudo or jmp.chat
No one said Signal provided anonymity.

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

2 and 3 are the whole point of the original post.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org -4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

How do you figure?

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sure, there are workarounds, but most people aren’t going to jump through all those extra hoops just to use an app.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org -1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Must not be important to them then.

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

And that's one way to make things marginalized.

[–] shades@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 3 days ago

you need first to provide your ID to the goverment.

Doesn't need to be a government issued ID iirc, also doesn't have to be issued by the country you are trying to purchase it in.