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Comment by kome | Hacker News Reader

Signal exposes the user's phone number, better alternative is to use burner phones or Telegram.

Telegram doesn't have encryption for groups though.

Actually they do: https://telegram.org/faq#q-so-how-do-you-encrypt-data , but since group chats are using Telegram's servers the encryption is not client-to-client. Here is the actual specification of how does their srever-client encryption work: https://core.telegram.org/mtproto

>> “ since group chats are using Telegram's servers the encryption is not client-to-client”

That is, it is not end-to-end-encrypted (E2EE) — which is the whole point of apps like this.

Or an open standard like Matrix

First time hearing about Matrix standard. But in case the clients are maintained by some individuals - why should we trust them that there are no backdoors in their compiled binaries? Seems like a nice project! But probably it will take it's small niche, probably for now it is not wide spreaded, haven't heard any noise about the standard.

The signal server has 10 maintainers out of which 5 are signal employees.

Matrix is 100% open source, has a larger community maintaining it and is federated.

If you're worried about backdoors then you should have more eyes on the code.

I was wondering why nobody seemed to mention Matrix here

Or use a virtual number.

Can you elaborate on virtual number? Don’t I have to pay for a virtual number that is essentially linked to my credit card... with my name on it. GV also knows who I am.

It depends of course on your specific situation, but Google Voice offers free virtual phone numbers. No credit card, and you can set it up without personally identifying information.

You can easily find others by searching. You can also use pre-paid credit cards if you must pay.

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