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

submitted 2 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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[–] solrize@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Do you mean the client side is open source? What about the server? If you're required to use Signal's server, how do you know it's not disclosing metadata? If you can self-host it, why the phone number?

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

The idea is you don't need to trust the server

Messages sent don't contain a readable sender field

Mobile numbers may not be necessary long term, architecture depends on accounts being created Witt phone numbers. Usernames were very recently introduced. Soon we may see requirement for phone number dropped, unless related to spam control

[–] rirus@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

You trust the server if you don't verify fingerprints. Signal makes that too difficult.

Sealed sender is a theater that you can enable but still have to trust Intel, aws and the signal server.

[–] solrize@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The wikipedia article looks informative and I will read through it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)

Is spam a serious problem on other messaging systems?

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 1 points 23 hours ago

I have received maybe 3 spam messages in many years of use

Spam is a huge problem on other messaging apps I have tried