alozuldo 
It's Going Down"The move is yet another piece of the Signal ethos to keep as little data on hand as it can, lest the authorities try to intrude on the company."
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/04/signal-app-username-phone-number-privacy/
jenkinse@igd_news Keeping "as little data on hand as it can" would mean not having phone numbers on hand in the first place
Lee writes:
"If Signal receives a subpoena demanding that they hand over all account data related to a user with a specific username ... Signal would turn over that user’s phone number ... optional usernames are only a partial fix"
Lee's a good journalist and privacy advocate but this article mostly just echoes Signal talking points IMO
Bill Lamb@zachvat @igd_news The only interesting take away IMO is that you can change your username, which apparently disconnects your old username from your account.
The rest of the article is just the president of Signal Foundation patting themself on the back, making excuses for why they even need your phone number, and talking themself up as "the gold standard for private messaging" as though encrypted messaging apps which don't use centralized servers and don't ask for your phone number don't exist
John Abbe (aka Slow)@slowenough @zachvat @igd_news Not going to recommend any particular app but I'd say take a look at how apps like Matrix, Delta Chat, Session and SimpleX Chat do things and you'll see that they use decentralized frameworks and don't ask for your phone number (though some instances of Matrix might ask for an email address, and Delta Chat uses a BYO approach to email addresses).
@slowenough @zachvat @igd_news Matrix and Delta Chat are built on federated principles, Session is an interesting case study since it was forked from Signal and evolved to address Signal's shortcomings. SimpleX goes the extra mile to avoid contact mapping and doesn't use any form of user id.
If you like P2P synchronous chat apps also take a look at Briar, but you can't use it for asyncrhonous chat without doing extra setup and there's no app for iphone
@slowenough @zachvat @igd_news I haven't tested them all but I believe that there is some form of audio/video call for all the apps I mentioned except maybe Briar.
Things to note:
Matrix is a protocol, not an "app" per se. Apps like Element and FluffyChat are built on top of it. Feature availability may depend on which app you use.
@slowenough @zachvat @igd_news Also Delta Chat doesn't have "built in" call support, it just piggybacks off whichever service you want to use like Jitsi, and is still an experimental feature.
Session and SimpleX only do 1:1 calls and in Session the feature is still in beta.
Most of these apps (except maybe SimpleX) show your IP to your call partner, unlike when you write them e.g. session will do onion routing for text messages but P2P for calls.
@slowenough @zachvat @igd_news Thanks for the mention of Elemental Chat, always nice to hear of more options!
@jenkinse @zachvat @igd_news Element is a Matrix client as it turns out. Someone mentioned it to me recently as something they were planing to switch to from Signal, and I thought it might be Holo's Elemental Chat, which was experimental, but I looked around and don't see any sign of that coming back.
I learned enough about Holo some years back to find it interesting, and many people I know are or were involved, but it seems to be moving ahead very slowly.
✨buff dog himbo✨@igd_news YES!! OMG YESS FINALLY!! FUCK YES
Andy Mouse@igd_news Not sure who uses Signal and thinks it's a good privacy alternative. It's based in the US. All messages go via their servers. Sure, encryption. WhatsApp has that too. Doesn't stop analysis of metadata and networks...
Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️⚧️@andymouse @igd_news
Yeah and they'll lie to the court that they only had access to two timestamps per account, risking being charged for obstruction of Justice? Totally reasonable move. /s
https://signal.org/bigbrother/
Yeah and they'll lie to the court that they only had access to two timestamps per account, risking being charged for obstruction of Justice? Totally reasonable move. /s
https://signal.org/bigbrother/
