zlacker

>>pera+(OP)
One has to wonder about behind the scenes heuristics as it pertains to taking a chance distributing a backdoored version sideloaded into the App Stores. One also wonders about whether the encryption or app are possibly compromised generally (even if the source is vetted and distributions are verified)

Perhaps most of interest though would be how many phones are owned otherwise, to give access to the protester Signal comms anyway

And also metadata must still fly around anyway, no?

>>killsw+f3
Signal does a pretty good job at minimizing the metadata it has access to. For example, the app can tell you who of your contacts has Signal installed but the Signal service itself never gets to see your contacts (https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/).

>>raspyb+R3
Signal absolutely could do better in minimizing metadata by simply not requiring a phone number. Despite this obvious, huge, and dangerous shortcoming, I have never seen a single explanation of why Signal needs a phone number for signup.

>>canjob+Xd
They give an explanation literally every single time this subject is brought up, but of course on the Internet there's someone who against all possible odds manages to completely ignore years and years of the reasoning being linked to or given by a person at Signal in every single possible thread on Signal possible anywhere on the Internet, but what can you do?

>>kick+je
I've asked many times and searched many times and never found a convincing answer. What's the reason?

>>canjob+if
One is for their private contact discovery system[1] and two because they were trying to promote Signal as a default messenger with iMessage like automatic encryption upgrading. A goal to enable people to adopt it even if all their friends weren’t converted yet.

[1] https://www.signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/

Of course, this feature is Android only as iOS doesn’t allow default alternatives.