Leaked phone number of Mark Zuckerberg reveals he is on Signal

He wouldn't need to use his real number/name just to do product research though. It would just needlessly confuse any contacts who have his actual number and use signal.

Signal also has nothing he can emulate. Its most meaningful selling point is that it doesn't have an association or integration with a scummy social media company, and people using it for that reason are already lost to Facebook. This is a feature he cannot ever hope to copy.

To me, this is the obvious answer.

...and an even more obvious reason is that he just wanted to see what his competition looked like.

I bet the CEO of McDonalds has been to Burger King at least once to check out the customer experience. It really doesn't mean anything.

They allegedly can’t monitor WhatsApp. That’s why this is news. Of WA is so secure (supposedly implementing the Signal protocol), then what use does ZuckerB have for Signal?

... which should be taken as a sign of Signal's technical excellence.

Just consider: if you're looking for privacy-respecting, actually secure, reviewed, audited and tested to bone tech -- short of replicating the work yourself, who's assessment can you trust? Perhaps paradoxically, you should foremost trust the unspoken opinions of criminals. Because those people are likely betting their lives and freedoms on the tech choice. Barely any other group will approach such a choice with more vigor.

So, morals aside, that a technology is being used by criminals is actually a compliment to that technology.

A number of my friends and I use it for cross-platform group chats since we have a mix of android and iOS users. It’s a convenient messaging app, the privacy is a bonus for most of them...

It doesn't seem like you are aware that WhatsApp hired Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of the Signal encryption protocol, to re-implement it for WhatsApp. AFAIK it is still used in WhatsApp today.

I will take this moment also to mention that "re-implement" isn't exactly right in that they modified the protocol slightly to allow for someone in control of the administration server to change a user's private key without their knowing, so that the admin can decrypt the E2E communications using the known key.

What are the odds that Zuckerberg knows a lot of people in the tech business and some of them are Signal users?

> Disclaimer: My views are my own (and not necessarily shared by my employers).

Who is your employer? It's not mentioned in your profile...

As in, having them followed by "ghosts" to report back to him what they're doing, like he's doing with the rest of us? :)

(1) You can't always trust the opinions of 100 developers, even if you can somehow consolidate them. Certain things are best seen firsthand, even if you have opinions of top 20 people you trust.

(2) Lugging multiple phones is clumsy enough that most people won't consider it, most CEOs, even more so. Two is somehow tolerable. And you need competitors' apps always available, to try things while you have an idea, and to easily compare.

Everybody should have a shutter over the camera, just to protect from blunders and misclicks.

No matter how you trust your software, some malware may want to activate it, especially at a high-value target like Zuckerberg (or Bezos, or Nadella, etc).

Alas, microphones are not as easy to deactivate.

Hawaiian land ownership is a fragmented mess and this is not at all unusual. I hate fb as much as the next guy but this was not shady.

>"I mean he left the people in their homes."

This sounds more akin to a discussion about Oligarchs after the collapse of the Soviet Union than a discussion about an American CEO in California.

Kind of eerie, even if you didn't intend it to sound that way.

> after he learned that a developer wanted to purchase one of his neighbor's homes and use the fact that Zuckerberg lived close by as a marketing tactic

That's just... creepy from the developer.

Also how is living next to Mark Zuckerberg a perk? Unless you want to build an illegally zoned Startup Incubator focused on IoT and the main acquirer you're targeting happens to live next door and notices your product everyday...

none of the former neighbors live there anymore, the leasing arrangement was to provide time for them to find new places to move to

finding the homes of the rich and famous is absolutely trivial.

>I mean he left the people in their homes.

how good of him . /s

Generally if someone does something you don't like you ask them to stop; if they don't you sue them , or if conditions allow you ask law enforcement to step in.

>This was Zuckerberg’s way to eke out a bit more privacy in the vein of a normal human.

on what planet do normal humans buy all the surrounding real estate in some of the most expensive places to live to 'eke out a bit more privacy'?

This is quite clearly a show of finance and power that few 'normal human' people would ever be able to demonstrate themselves.

Good on him, i'm not upset about it, he SHOULD spend his money how he wants -- i'm upset that people try to paint the behavior as normal and run-of-the-mill.

There is nothing normal/every-man/run-of-the-mill about Mark Zuckerberg's existence.

This is precisely it. Mark is saying that privacy isn't the norm. Similar to how being a billionaire isn't the norm.

However when you have enough money you can afford such privileges.

Zuckerberg, the man who made his billions destroying privacy for the rest of us.

Ask people for unfettered access to their unlocked phone, even with them sitting there and watching you to prevent you from doing anything but poke around, and you will find a whole lot of people suddenly care more about privacy.

What is probably closer to the truth is that people care little about privacy from someone they think they will never come face to face with, and who they believe won't leak that information to anyone they will come face to face with.

The problem comes when people don't have the knowledge necessary to assess the risk of that happening in any given scenario.

I would definitely not do the same and its not a fact. Plenty of people value their privacy they are just not as tech savvy and not aware that they are giving it up.

> people don't care about privacy

Funny you phrase it like that. When I discuss with people about 'privacy', nobody has anything to hide. When I take 2-3 minutes explaining to them why 'someone' (data markets) out there knows: what type of porn gets them off, what they shop, how much money they have, what diseases they have (that may impact their chances to a life insurance - theirs' and their kids'), their drinking habits (that may impact their premiums on car insurance), who they meet/greet/f..k..

Then their expression changes a bit. Ignorance is bliss. I awaken 1-2 people at a time. BUT (big but - sorry for the caps) "all my friends is on FB, and Chrome is such a nice browser".

> you would probably do the same

I used to know a guy who geniunely had the opinion: if it wasn't illegal to sell heroin to kids, I'd be a billionaire right now selling to all my kids, starting with my kids' friends.

Unfortunately this person has kids, voting rights, walks among us. Yes I want to be a billionaire (I'm many-many zeros away from this target). No I wouldn't sell heroin (or your kids' photos you post on social media) to anyone else. Zuck has no problem getting 13yo on Instagram, profiling them, and trading their data. So NO.

It's definitely not a fact, but rather an argument.

Non-technical people within my circle appreciate GDPR. They fall into recent Apple's privacy advertising, FWIW. Many of my non-IT business peers have moved to private email services long ago — e.g. Protonmail, Mailbox.org, Fastmail, etc. — regardless of Google's Eric Schmidt[1] anti-privacy stance back in the day. Almost everyone I constantly communicate with use Telegram, and privacy of comms (FWIW) was among selling points at the time of switching the IM.

I won't exaggerate the value of privacy for a general public. But since Snowden's publications, Cambridge Analytica scandal and GDPR discussion with a widespread media coverage, common citizens became much more privacy-concerned, at least in Europe.

Below I quote highlights from the recent FRA (EU Agency for Fundamental Rights) survey report "Your rights matter: Data protection and privacy - Fundamental Rights Survey", June 2020[2]:

> 41% do not want to share any personal data with private companies, almost double the number compared to public bodies;

> the type of personal data influences people’s willingness to share. Only around 5% want to share their facial images or fingerprints with private companies;

> 72% know the privacy settings on their smart phones. But 24% do not know how to check the privacy settings on their apps;

> 55% fear criminals or fraudsters accessing their personal data. Around 30% worry about advertisers, businesses and foreign governments’ access to information without them knowing;

> 33% do not read the terms and conditions when using online services compared with 22% who always read them;

> 69% know about the GDPR. A similar number know their national data protection supervisory authority (71%);

> only 51% are aware that they can access their personal data held by companies.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid...

[2] https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-20... (PDF)

Regarding your second point, I think it's more that people don't care as much about privacy if the consequences seem to be low/nonexistent, and they weigh their interest in platforms like Instagram, TikTok, etc. more highly than the potential negative impacts of their privacy being violated. I know users of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Slack, etc. who will almost definitely never move to encrypted email because they like the platform and the community. Folks on HN and in the tech sector in general can have quite different experiences with those in the world at-large, and one's viewpoint on this will differ based on who's in your networks. I think it's likely if you walk down the street in Manhattan or LA and ask someone if they know what DRM, copyleft, or GDPR is, the answer will be no. But they will care if the music they have can't be copied/shared, they'll know Wikipedia, and they'll care if their information with Google can't be deleted or is sold to other companies.

Why do you feel the need to make up totally absurd excuses to protect his image?

Do you know him personally or has he done something for you? Why do you believe he is a person of integrity?

That would make perfect sense, since public figures mostly get assassinated at their homes.

He will be simply replaced with Mk 2.

I think unique has a specific meaning in your context which isn't what the standard definition of unique means. There are never two people in a carrier's database assigned to the same number. It can however be assigned to another person as long as it is deassigned from the previous person. The number, at any point, is always unique.

Not exactly a security flaw, as the new owner of the phone number won't have the original owner's secret keys (they never leave the phone, of course) and Signal will still send the messages to the previously authenticated client.

Taking over a Signal account requires access to the phone number and the password used to register it (or waiting a week). And this will still not give the attacker access to the private keys; When these keys change, Signal will put an alert message on ongoing chats and ask for confirmation.

There was a recent issue where Chinese citizens pointed out that IMEs with telemetry enabled could capture what you type into Signal and it didn't warn you or try to mitigate this; the Signal guy ignored them, then dodged them for weeks and told everyone they were harassing him, then a white guy pointed out the same thing and his suggestions were immediately taken up.

https://app.wire.com already has that feature and it is based on signal protocol.

> Also, do you often send messages to people you don't know via chat apps linked to phone numbers?

Haha, thanks for the chuckle.

The CEO of Pepsi might.

If Elon test drove a BMW i3, we'd be hearing about it direct from him via a snarky tweet.

I was only joking but you have made a valid point.

We're going to need a citation for this claim