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Signal tests usernames so you can avoid sharing your phone number
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Technology
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About time! Hopefully they will find ways to reduce spam though.
Never had a spam message
I imagine unrestricted usernames would make spam easier than with phone numbers. I'm just hoping they have a way to control this.
You still need a phone number to sign up, so there shouldn't be any increase in spam
SimpleX has no phone number but I get no spam because only people I send a one-time invite code to can contact me. There is no directory of usernames.
Makes sense!
they're going with numbers along with usernames, kinda like discord to reduce spam. I hope they work.
Where are you receiving these spam messages from? Random numbers aimed at marketing or what?
Sorry I misframed it. I mean that since there's no need to reveal phone numbers, there could be an opportunity for spammers to increase spam by creating many accounts, and Signal should preemptively find ways where such spams could be reduced. However, I realized after posting that the article says we still need to sign up to signal with a phone number. However, there's still the risk of impersonation (by writing someones username with tiny changes) and people trying to add vulnerable users by username (which they might be using on other platforms) instead of phone number.
Probably possible yeah, but if the account gets flagged after users reporting it, they'll need to get a new number afterwards, which isn't that easy (at least where I live).
Best way to reduce spam is to remove phone numbers entirely.