zlacker

The typical answer is that a secure app is useless if no one actually uses it, and the use of phone numbers is an unfortunate tradeoff that had to be made to allow the general public to easily sign up for Signal and find their friends automatically from their phone's contacts.

Often this answer is accompanied by pure sarcasm where if you are concerned about this feature, you are told that Signal is not for you and "you can go play at being a spy and sharing a secret decoder ring with your friends", as these people regard PGP to be. I wish those Signal advocates could lay off the sarcasm, it just makes the project look bad.