cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12200311
Signal Finally Rolls Out Usernames, So You Can Keep Your Phone Number Private
Whittaker says that, for better or worse, a phone number remains a necessary requisite
Worse. It is for the worse. We sure did wait a long time for this half measure, Signal.
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Jami doesn’t require a phone number, which is p2p. Xmpp (+ Omemo) doesn’t require a phone number and it’s federated… I mean, if a service is willing to rid of phone numbers, it’ll do totally without them.
The challenge of having your device solve a nasty PoW that takes minutes would not deter most people: a timer once is better than evil captchas, phone numbers, etc. I don’t understand why they use hCaptcha and not that.
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A lot, but farming phone numbers from poor countries is also cheap and Signal sends them insanely expensive SMS. There is no perfect solution, spammers aren’t stupid. Since Signal is centralised they can enforce PoW incrementally if they get reports for spam, I still think it is way better than hCaptcha which is garbage.
phone numbers for spam prevention are a bandaid for a mediocre solution. the mediocre aspect being that it’s totally centralized when it should at least be federated like SimpleX. SimpleX is the ultimate solution to be honest with you, it’s federated, fast, extremely private and extremely secure.
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It’s the signal metadata that they want to keep associated with an identity
They still can fulfill government requests for who is talking to who and how often
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Got proof for that last claim?
I thought their sealed sender feature was meant to prevent exactly this scenario.
Maybe use a VOiP for verification?
Fucking beta release . I’m not making google account to download the apk
Slim shady
Signal is one of those apps that is good because it is popular and old.
However, they need to step up there game if they want to compete with other messagers.
Its also the only really free messenger. Free as in freedom and no money.
- Session
- Briar
- Simplex Chat
- Jami (unproven)
I use Jami daily. The pro is that it is completely decentralised: it doesn’t need a server to run, all communications are over DHT. The cons is that not all messages are delivered instantly, and both sender and recipient need to be online at the same time.
Be careful as its not been audited
I am not expecting security from it, just complete decentralisation.
Yeah mainstream messenger that other people have. I personally like briar but it sucks my battery dry in houra.
