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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

I think there are other reasons, but I really dislike using my phone number as an ID.

Phone numbers are much harder to change , so if some annoying person gets a hold of it suddenly they can harass me across networks. This is a thing that actually happens! A big reason why I don't like telegram (even if everything else is awesome).

I'm cool with my account being linked to a phone number, but I'd rather avoid giving the phone number to people I want to talk to (instead handing out a network-specific username)

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You can set any available username in Telegram and give that out to people or point them to https://telegram.me/yourusername

These people would be able to converse with you on Telegram but would not be able to find your phone number on the app/site.

Wire is a platform/client that allows setting up accounts with email address and/or phone number, although when I set it up I had to provide a phone number. Contact sharing is not perfect yet. It also has end-to-end encryption by default, has multi-device and multi-platform sync, and some other cool features (doodling, for example).

It also effectively locks out the use of that service on a non-mobile operating system unless you tether your Android or IOS smartphone to it. It seems really backwards to force the use of specific (proprietary) client software and specific operating systems in an age where every modern operating system can technically participate on the internet.

Shouldn't this work both ways, where if someone does harass you, that they have a phone number to sing into systems allows you to easily block them across all channels. Combined with Android spam blocker it could work well.

That said I'd like 2 user options on my phone more to separate work/personal so I can turn off one but not the other.

Creating a new phone number to spam people takes about 2$ and 5 minutes at your nearest grocery store to get a prepaid card.

Changing your phone number and getting everyone who still has the old to change over can take years.

Creating an email account is cheaper and easier than that, yet Gmail and others do a great job blocking spam. Any reason why similar identifying rules can't be brought to phone numbers?

Because GMail actually blocks basically everything.

To ensure your emails actually arrive in GMail, the only sure way is using GMail yourself.

Otherwise, you’ll never be able to be sure they arrive.

That’s like every ISP only allowing people from the same ISP to call them, and then increasing the cost to creating a new phone number.

Sure, now you prevent spam calls, but you also make phones unusable.

IIRC, Telegram allows you to set a username and give that out instead.

But you can still be nagged if someone finds your phone number.

I suddenly got hit with a flurry of spam calls today which furthers my distaste for giving out a phone number. If only giving out free limited use phone numbers was a thing.

Even worse is when you loose your phone. I just lost mine (still hoping some nice Berliner turned it into the lost and found) and I guess I've gone and lost all my whatsapp history + contacts there.

I think Whatsapp backs up its chat history to Google Drive / iCloud.

For contacts it just uses the system address book.

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