It needs to be said. Because anonymity is only one part of privacy.

Security is another part - in messaging, this means that the message cannot be spied on in transit, and cannot be altered in transit.

Authenticity is another part - you need to know that the message came from who it claims to have come from, and not elsewhere.

Signal does not provide anonymity, basically. But it guarantees security and authenticity beyond doubt. And this is useful - you can exchange secure information with people using Signal, knowing that it’s not being spied on or altered, knowing that only the person you intend to see the data can see it, and knowing that they know that you sent it.

But yeah, if you want to send messages anonymously, other services are necessary.

So Signal doesn’t provide anonymity. Is that all you’re saying?

You literally don’t understand how hashing works, got it. Please educate yourself on this topic. In short, “connecting your existing contacts” is ENTIRELY possible with hashed phone numbers; it’s not even complicated or tricky. To claim otherwise, as you just did, is nothing but trumpeting your own ignorance.

As for deleting (and propagating deletion of) messages, this is most definitely NOT a matter of “just trust us”. The client is open-source! We KNOW how it works. We KNOW that deletion propagates across devices when you tell it to. We KNOW that the service cannot see your unencrypted messages, and that the encrypted messages are made with AES so even quantum computers in the future can’t decrypt them. This is incredibly far from “just trust us”.

This is vastly different from every other piece of information I’ve read about Signal. Please link me to a source for your claims.

Are you talking about the client app, or about the service?

Much of what you said doesn’t apply to the service, which stores hashed phone numbers and first access / last access times and nothing else.

And the client does store these things, but also lets users delete messages and contacts. Your message deletions can propagate as well.

Indeed, I also don’t realize that. Please explain further.

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.

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.

Be specific: what does Signal divilge about me to outsiders besides “I have used Signal”?