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Comment by rasso | Hacker News Reader

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rasso

Except real privacy?

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Not even that, because it is linked to phone numbers.

Username registration is currently being tested: https://community.signalusers.org/t/public-username-testing-...

> and register for a new account with a phone number (you can use the same one you’re using in Production).

I hope that they make it so you can register WITHOUT a phone number. Perfectly fine if it's not the default. This is post is currently implying that is not currently the case.

So this puts signal on par with telegram, not above? Am I missing something?

Telegram's encryption is opt-in which means most people don't use the encrypted chats at all.

Yep, a great example: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/why_not_signal.html#phon...

Signal is private, but not anonymous. Related, but two different things.

Afaik you can crrate an account without a number.

No. You can just hide it from other users in group chats now (and perhaps 1:1, didn't yet check but you still need one to sign up)

Where is the option for group chats please?

Does that require the sealed-sender thingy?

Not yet, but they are working on that.

Why is it more private than WhatsApp?

Pay attention to WhatsApp's wording (all privacy/security claims start with "your messages"), and their privacy policy, and you'll see that while message involving with individuals (non-Business users) are secured, your contact list is not, neither are chats with businesses or the metadata about you chatting (destinations, frequency, time)

I encourage you to read the article, but Signal minimizes the metadata it stores about you, doesn't hold on to you contact list, doesn't keep information about your IP address, etc.

WhatsApp instead makes tons of money from this kind of metadata.

Using WhatsApp means Facebook/Meta knows the timestamp, sender and recipient of every message sent.

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