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Comment by ananonymoususer | Hacker News Reader

Governments can easily correlate GV numbers to mobile devices. I personally no longer trust Signal. Moxie's departure stinks like a canary.

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"Governments can easily correlate GV numbers to mobile devices."

Google Voice doesn't need to be installed on a mobile device. I have my Google Voice accounts (yes, multiple) set to forward SMS to me via email.

"I personally no longer trust Signal. Moxie's departure stinks like a canary."

I never really trusted Moxie to begin with but events like this make me wonder all the more if Signal is really being run from Fort Meade. Fortunately for me I used Signal as my "non-secure" messaging platform and use other messenger options for secure comms.

"Moxie" just seemed so hilariously stereotypical in the first place I could not help but think it was all BS. The name, his style, his online blogs.....maybe he just wants to craft a certain type of image but it seemed a little too perfectly matched to the type of person who would create a free, easy to use and super secure messenger.

Personally I really liked Wickr Messenger (no phone number required) but they were recently acquired by AWS :-(

edit: Also looking up Wickr now it seems like they ended up specializing in providing secure messaging FOR the government (and even are the only ones to pass some NSA specific test) so maybe that was not the best choice.....

> ...events like this make me wonder all the more if Signal is really being run from Fort Meade.

Which events are you referring to here?

Use a truly disposable service like https://yoursecretnumber.com instead of Google Voice. This gives you a number with an OCN type of Wireless as well, instead of one that shows up as IPES (IP enabled Service Provider) or CLEC like Bandwidth.com and nearly all VoIP numbers.

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