Some are quick to promote apps as being safe for your use just because they are encrypted. I will talk about how many of the popular apps that are commonly t...
Sure, but other messengers that do not use phone-numbers do not leak this info. And as long as Signal is used by a certain minority it is a risky metadata leak.
And you can turn this in any way you want, but using phone-numbers as the public identifier is a really bad idea and disqualifies Signal for most privacy sensitive communication. Even if everyone was using Signal it would be still a bad idea to hand out your phone number and have it visible in group-chats.
We are not comparing Signal with “messengers that do not use phone-numbers”. We are comparing it to messengers in the level of Telegram and Whatsapp, because the point was that placing it all on the same level isn’t accurate or fair. Reality isn’t Black&White.
Signal is definitely flawed, but I’d much rather have people asking me to communicate via Signal than through Telegram/Whatsapp as they usually do. I do wish Signal was able to catter to that demografic.
Because “slightly less” is a subjective measure that’s relative to how pedantic we want to get.
Even XMPP is a “slightly less” bad option, in the sense that you are still targetable when using a sufficiently advanced method, and you are still not free of risk.
Even hosting your own instance you give away the IP, if you don’t host it then you do have to trust the host, since it does store metadata (maybe more so than Signal).
Sure, but other messengers that do not use phone-numbers do not leak this info. And as long as Signal is used by a certain minority it is a risky metadata leak.
And you can turn this in any way you want, but using phone-numbers as the public identifier is a really bad idea and disqualifies Signal for most privacy sensitive communication. Even if everyone was using Signal it would be still a bad idea to hand out your phone number and have it visible in group-chats.
And yet Telegram and Whatsapp do that and more.
We are not comparing Signal with “messengers that do not use phone-numbers”. We are comparing it to messengers in the level of Telegram and Whatsapp, because the point was that placing it all on the same level isn’t accurate or fair. Reality isn’t Black&White.
Signal is definitely flawed, but I’d much rather have people asking me to communicate via Signal than through Telegram/Whatsapp as they usually do. I do wish Signal was able to catter to that demografic.
Why? That is like saying lets only compare really bad options with slightly less bad options.
Threema for example does not require phone numbers and there are also good XMPP based messengers.
Because “slightly less” is a subjective measure that’s relative to how pedantic we want to get.
Even XMPP is a “slightly less” bad option, in the sense that you are still targetable when using a sufficiently advanced method, and you are still not free of risk.
Even hosting your own instance you give away the IP, if you don’t host it then you do have to trust the host, since it does store metadata (maybe more so than Signal).