Nowadays, a majority of apps require you to sign up with your email or even worse your phone number. If you have a phone number attached to your name, meaning you went to a cell service/phone provider, and you gave them your ID, then no matter what app you use, no matter how private it says it is, it is not private. There is NO exception to this. Your identity is instantly tied to that account.
Signal is not private. I recommend Simplex or another peer to peer onion messaging app. They don’t require email or phone number. So as long as you protect your IP you are anonymous
Signal doesn’t know your phone number, though. It’s only used to identify other users in your contacts, and not a single thing about it is stored.
That’s not true. When asked to provide data, Signal is able to give your phone number and the last login time.
Signal stores the hash of the phone number. So you can query them for a specific phone number, but are unable to figure out phone numbers based on the hashes (outside of brute force - trying every 12-digit phone number).
And after doing that, you learn “this person uses/used Signal”, with no information about particular messages whatsoever.
Okay, I was not aware that it was only the hash of the phone number. I was under the impression that it was the phone number itself.
Wow. You give them your phone number to sign up. They text you a confirmation code but they don’t know your phone number. Magic