this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2022
15 points (94.1% liked)
Privacy
31265 readers
560 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
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.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
they're both garbage because they exclusively use telephone numbers.
phone numbers are a hassle to get, so most people don't have more than one - which is the the first thing someone needs to steal your identity, and the only thing necessary to track your location (for anyone with access to the tools). you should never publish the phone number that you use for 2fa. if you're concerned about privacy and carry a phone, you shouldn't reveal the number of the SIM in the phone you carry to people you don't trust.
signal and telegram require that you share a phone number with anyone you want to communicate with. this hasn't made any sense since around the time signal was called "textsecure" and actually used SMS as a transport.
tldr: they're both garbage.
While I do agree that Signal should implement a way to register without a phone number, saying "they are garbage" is not helpful to the conversation.
That kind of statement is also inaccurate, in my opinion. It highly depends onyour threat model, which is something that is often overlooked in these kind of threads. Not everyone has the same needs or is able to make the same sacrifices for privacy, and I'd say Signal is a very good option for the vast majority of people getting into a more privacy-oriented tech "lifestyle" (not the best word, but can't think of a better one rn).
ok, i see i was mistaken about telegram requiring you to reveal your phone number to everyone you talk to, but, you still need one to sign up which makes it unsuitable for anyone who cares about privacy (and potentially harmful to those who don't, even if they don't realize it).
The phone number is used only for registration by Signal. It's not used as a ID for registration.
requiring one just for registration would still make it garbage, but, last I checked it was also the only identifier. did they add usernames recently or something? searching for a minute I don't see anything like that.