TariqFeb 21

Friend asked me about Signal, triggered by the ever growing concerns about US big tech.

They're not technical and I said I'd look into it for them.

I've never used it and upon install it asked for

1. Permissions to see my "contacts"

2. A phone number.

What? Why?

Can Signal be used without these?

#signal #signalapp #security #privacy #surveillance

Show threadChristian Lawson-PerfectFeb 21
@rzeta0 1. yes. 2. no
Show threadTariqFeb 21

@christianp

That's a real shame.

In the era of ICE and rising state authoritarianism I wonder if that is becoming a more urgent issue?

Even if the signal organisation can forever be trusted not to abuse the phone number, it doesn't mean that information can't be taken from them, by the state for example.

Show threadᎶㄖ卩卂ㄥ
@rzeta0 @christianp
1) signal need access to your contacts to do contact discovery.. to figure out who in your contact lists are a signal user. .However signal doesn't harvest your contact list and use it infringing your privacy.. you can read more on signal's contact discovery here. signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/
2) Signal is designed to use a phone number as a primary identifier. Signal do provide phone number privacy, which is on by default, which make sure that your phone number is not exposed to other signal users (unless they already know your number, but you can change that too).
You should decide if you want to use signal based on your threat profile. If sharing your phone number to signal for registration is a no-no from a threat perspective, signal is not the right solution for you. But if you are already a whatsapp user and are trying to move on to a more secure platform, signal certainly provides you much better privacy.
What signal can reveal about you is documented here signal.org/bigbrother/ You can take a look and decide if this is good privacy for your threat profile.
HTH..
Technology preview: Private contact discovery for Signal

At Signal, we’ve been thinking about the difficulty of private contact discovery for a long time. We’ve been working on strategies to improve our current design, and today we’ve published a new private contact discovery service. Using this service, Signal clients will be able to efficiently and s...

Signal Messenger
Feb 22 at 3:26pmWeb
Show threadTariqFeb 22

@gopal @christianp

thanks - very helpful.