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If your adversary is a nation state, hiding your phone number is not an option. They already know it and might compromise a device. Perhaps another service is better or the use of a burner phone is preferred.

How can a nation-state adversary compromise a device only knowing the phone number?

1. Track locations of phones in contact.

2. Rubber hose.

3. Obtain copies of your messages still retained in your contacts' phones.

Easily fixed by hosting your own Signal server and recompiling its phone apps, no?

"Easily"

Yeah I didn't particularly like that about Signal. If a malignant person were trying to keep tabs on a person (victim) using Signal, they would be able to see that the victim has switched to encrypted messaging (letting the malignant person know the victim is at least partially onto them). Thinking about the use case of a person trying to avoid a hacker/stalker here for example.