this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
168 points (98.3% liked)
Privacy
31882 readers
571 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 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Do we still like signal? I remember reading something about why you should stop using signal but this seems contrary to that
Many people also fail to make a proper distinction between private and anonymous, which is why some people get mad at the phone number thing.
Ok that makes sense
Ah, yes, I'm not giving an instant messenger application my phone number, it doesn't need it, especially if I'm not even using it on a phone.
That's private information that I only give out to close friends and family members.
The phone number thing is a major problem but Signal just has the momentum imo. Ultimately, they're gonna need to fix it or we're all going to have to stop using it.
Private =/= anonymous
Signal is amazing
Anonymity is good but that's not the biggest problem with Signal's reliance on phone numbers. Phone numbers are just not secure and not designed to be authentication credentials. Phone services are vulnerable to a large number of exploits and that's never going to change. Signal has a number of mitigations to try preventing those exploits from hitting people but that's a bandage at best. Reliance on phone numbers is a gigantic weak point in Signal's privacy and security.
For every thing on this world, there will be people disliking this thing and being very vocal about it.
EFF still recommend Signal (and others) for people fitting various risk profiles: https://ssd.eff.org/