No, I am afraid it’s not. Just because it has a clear one pricing doesn’t make it cheaper. One barely buys a VPN for one or just seven months or so.

I would assume that they mean ‘VPN not for anonymity’ when they say that. I agree with you though.

The thing is that 10 min search results in - trust all of them, trust none of them. A lot of folks also have affordability issues. So that makes this issue even more complex. When they turn a bit more “respected” forums they are told to “self host” or are given recommendations that they already knew of but couldn’t afford. So the problem lives on. All this lead to shady and heavy marketing VPNs come to the front.

With the phone number, no; and since there’s no Signal usage without a phone number, well…. Also, I think somewhere on their website (or some place) they talked about burner phones as if it’s a universal phenomena.

Signal has felt “out of place” to me. Odd. It doesn’t fit in, doesn’t make sense if I think a bit farther about it.

I hope something decentralised comes out of Signal protocol minus the need for a phone number.