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this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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Privacy
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The question is: What privacy do I loose by signing up to Signal with a phone number instead of hypothetically a username.
If you are being monitored, they know your phone number. With that they know you are using Signal, but nothing more. Messaging through Signal is safe.
If you are not being monitored, nobody knows you are using Signal. Messaging through Signal is safe
if you could sign up with a username, your account couldn't be linked to a real world identity. also the government wouldn't have a phone number to send state malware to (unlike signal the telephony system is full of security vulnerabilities)
if you personally are monitored then yes they know your phone number. but here it's the other way around. you became a person of interest because you use signal.
no. everybody who has the power to issue data requests to signal, and also has access to a database binding phone numbers to identities, knows that you are using signal.
Ah ok now I get what you mean. Hashing for phone numbers is ineffective so it's a two way lookup. Is the population using Signal small enough that this doesn't just equate to surveiling everybody?
very few people use signal