I am a huge fan of SimpleX and their removal of user IDs. I think it's a brilliant solution, and wish that SimpleX was recommended more than Signal.
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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Privacy
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Yes, phone number should be optional for easy contact discovery, not mandatory. As Threema. You have to provide your ID when buying a sim card.
Thank you! Finally someone that also sees Signal as privacy invasing!
Don't need an ID to buy a burner phone/number
People dont realize that you may as well hand over your social security number when you pass out your phone number.
So, late to the party. Me Skuzi. This comment is more targeted towards your responses to user comments, but I would extend that to your entire thesis. So I decided to make an entirely new comment.
Honest questions/comments to follow:
Yes, the US govt can 'compel' a organization such as Signal to allow them to monitor/intercept encrypted messages, The government can even 'compel' a citizen to disclose their encryption key. The cost of non compliance varies from contempt of court to short term incarceration. United States v. Fricosu et al.
However, Signal would only shrug and hand them metadata. Even Signal can't decipher your messages. There are other services unrelated to Signal that operate thusly, such as VPNs, that absolutely do not keep logs and run in RAM only. Some of those VPNs have been raided and servers confiscated by multiple governments with nothing to show for their efforts. If I recall correctly mega.nz and other storage facilities operate along the same lines.
As to the requirement for a phone number, yes they do require a phone number. However, unless they've changed something recently, you can use a free or paid for, burner phone number for verification. The caveat is that if you ever have to recover your account or future verification, you may or may not have access to that number if you used a free service. So, that might be a consideration.
Also, some free services might not work while others will. If signing up for a paid account, burnerapp.com for instance, will allow you to sign up via their website, however you can't use a VPN. WiFi can be acquired at any coffee shop. If you prefer more private methods of payment for these services, there are those that accept crypto.
So, there are 'options.' You just might have to jump through a few hoops to get there.
Secondly, Signal is open source, no? The whole shebang including the protocol is open source. Where might 'they' be putting the backdoor to intercept encrypted messages? I can tell you this, the day the world finds out that the US govt has successfully cracked strong encryption ciphers, is the day you are going to see a lot of movement on this planet. From billion dollar corporations, private entities, governments, and even ne'er-do-wells on Signal.
I'm no 'fanboy', tho there is a lot to be a fan of. I'm not getting any kickbacks, compensation, or monetary advancements. If I need to be schooled, please do share.
Signal does plan to add a paid for service as well as their free service.
AES256 was broken the day it was released change my mind.
Be specific: what does Signal divilge about me to outsiders besides "I have used Signal"?
Signal over the past few years has been exposed for having flaws in its security integrity. Even the president's current administration has had a leak issue by using the platform, Signal.
Once again, they ask for your phone number. Anything they ask for your phone number, if your phone number is tied to your identity, can easily be revealed to reveal who you are.
The leak from the administration was because Pete Hegseth included a journalist in a discussion about sensitive war plans. Trying to blame that on Signal is deceptive on your part.
If you are saying that Signal does not offer anonymity then you are right. Anyone I message on there knows it's me. But Signal is still keeping my messages safe from monitoring and third-party surveillance, to the best of my knowledge.
This is the core of the issue, and it's wild how many people don't get it.
Your phone number is metadata. And people who think metadata is "just" data or that cross-referencing is some kind of sci-fi nonsense, are fundamentally misunderstanding how modern surveillance works.
By requiring phone numbers, Signal, despite its good encryption, inherently builds a social graph. The server operators, or anyone who gets that data, can see a map of who is talking to whom. The content is secure, but the connections are not.
Being able to map out who talks to whom is incredibly valuable. A three-letter agency can take the map of connections and overlay it with all the other data they vacuum up from other sources, such as location data, purchase histories, social media activity. If you become a "person of interest" for any reason, they instantly have your entire social circle mapped out.
Worse, the act of seeking out encrypted communication is itself a red flag. It's a perfect filter: "Show me everyone paranoid enough to use crypto." You're basically raising your hand.
So, in a twisted way, Signal being a tool for private conversations, makes it a perfect machine for mapping associations and identifying targets. The fact that it operates using a centralized server located in the US should worry people far more than it seems to.
The kicker is that thanks to gag orders, companies are legally forbidden from telling you if the feds come knocking for this data. So even if Signal's intentions are pure, we'd never know how the data it collects is being used. The potential for abuse is baked right into the phone-number requirement.
Signal is private, what you should differentiate is being anonymous or not. Using your usual phone number is NOT Anonymous but is PRIVATE, as in the content of your messages being only available to you and the person you're talking to
The way you get a phone number depends on you too, so you can be very much be Anonymous even if signal requires a phone number.
the phone number drives me nut since mine changes every few months; everyone i know has my voip number that gets everything forwarded to each new number.
You can also get a phone number in a number of ways without it being connected to your identity. You can use voip services or buy a phone and a SIM in cash. I still think this is a good think to point out for all the people who use signal or other services with a phone number directly connected to their identity.
Depends where you live. I'm in Australia and phone companies aren't allowed to activate a number without tying it to an ID. So criminals just use stolen IDs and regular people don't get privacy. Also YMMV but virtually every service that needs phone verification won't accept VoIP numbers anymore
lol try signing up for an email account today without tying a phone number to it or another established email account. It's incredibly difficult.
You might be able to create an account, but then all "3rd party services" (e.g. creating accounts on absolutely fucking anything) will be blocked and your account will be either restricted or forced to submit a kind of verification that doxes you to lift said block, probably.
I found a single sketchy provider that would take verifications from proton mail that allowed me to then create more accounts, but I had to try over a dozen mail providers before I found the obscure one that did not require any pre-existing accounts, phone numbers or identification documents to just create an email to simply sign up for any web forum, service or basically do anything most people do with email. Everything ends up linked to each other at some point.
There's just no privacy anymore. The ones who think there is are probably not as private as they really think they are today.
Tutamail is the only service I know of that still doesn't need anything but I don't expect it to last. Email providers that don't make you verify anything end up being used for spam and then websites just start blocking their domain from being used for account creation
Protonmail is highly accepted and tutamail didn't ask for my number or another email. You are in a group called privacy but you think there is no privacy?
I just stop using those accounts that force me to give up my number. It's called standards, YOU must have them and you will have more privacy than most.
This group function is to help increase privacy. That's what I'm doing by letting you know not to use your phone number. If you have a defeatist ideology. You lose.
Protonmail is highly accepted
Sure, requires 3rd party email or cell phone to work though.
tutamail didn’t ask for my number or another email
The last one, run by little over a dozen people as FOSS, and easily quashed by the long arm of the law or a pricey lawsuit. What happens then?
I just stop using those accounts that force me to give up my number. It’s called standards
You still need an email that is completely associated to you for official things like medical interactions, government interactions, and stuff like sports tickets if you care about going to a sports game in a town like Boston. Hell, when you send resumes I assume you have a professional inbox for that too.
So how do you do it? Do you live in two worlds with a burner phone / never checking your 'private' stuff outside of some kind of proxy/vpn scenario where you remote into whatever box is handling your actual private online presence?
Geez. You just don't get it. You don't need your identity tied to your email. Proton mail didn't ask me for a phone or email. But I've had it for years so maybe that changed. But you conceal your personal info when you sign up. Tutamail is used by many people. And you can email any other email provider with it