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Comment by _wldu | Hacker News Reader

Is there a market for a secure messaging app (similar to Signal) that does not rely on personally identifying information (phone numbers and emails) or is that too fringe?

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This is what I wish Signal was. A simple secure messenger that works with a username and not tied to an identity like phone number :-( Like HN......

Now that I'd happily pay for.

Yep. Me too. The network meta-data is always present (IP, src, dst, date, time, etc.). Law enforcement could use that to find criminal actors committing crimes on the app.

But having such an app would allow law abiding individuals to communicate privately and securely without disclosing their personally identifying data to anyone.

Have you had a look at Threema?

There was once Tor Messenger, but now it's dead, so I guess there is not a market for such a thing:

https://blog.torproject.org/sunsetting-tor-messenger/

https://getsession.org is a signal clone without the number requirement, just uses a session id.

E2EE voice & video conferencing is available in the beta coming in the next release

Matrix is probably the closet alternative but it's harder to use than Signal (lost your password? say goodbye to your messages!).

Yes. Without an email or phone number there would be no way to do an account recovery, but perhaps some other clever solutions (allow some of your contacts to reset for you, or sign a message with your key, etc.) may be an option.

That's a feature. I don't want my account to be recoverable without my password.

I understand that use case, but for most people that's horrible as they don't take care of their passwords very well.

Threema is around and well, though it's userbase is relatively small.

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