Signal is working on a way to sign up without a phone number. The feature has not yet been officially confirmed, and it is not yet known whether it will be available to all users or in what form.
  • onlinepersona@programming.dev
    3·
    3 hours ago

    Boy… We are going to get spammed.

    I never understood the “phone numbers are evil” people, whining about signal requiring them. As soon as this arrives, they will find another thing to whine about.

    Hopefully Signal will make it possible to block any and all communications from people wohtout a phone number, unless I reach out to them. And that that feature also be introduced to groups. Because otherwise maintaining public groups is going to be turboshit.

    • GottaHaveFaith@fedia.io
      2·
      2 hours ago

      mobile numbers require government identification in many countries. But yeah, not seeing an easy solution to the spam problem

      • onlinepersona@programming.dev
        1·
        41 minutes ago

        mobile numbers require government identification in many countries

        Yes and all they will know is “person A has installed signal”. Nothing more. If you haven’t degoogled tour phone or use one with a fruity logo, the government knows that you have the app already. It won’t need tour phone number.

  • scytale@piefed.zipEnglish
    16·
    9 hours ago

    GitHub commit d7447b1 states that “accounts without phone numbers can never get phone numbers, and accounts with them can never lose them”.

    So you’ll have to register a new account if you want to decouple your number.

  • katy ✨@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    10·
    10 hours ago

    just go the matrix route; username, password, 2fa, then any other connection requires you to verify with a current logged in session (or recovery code).

    • ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com
      8·
      9 hours ago

      As someone who uses matrix and runs a matrix server, matrix fucking suuuucks jfc why are so many privacy tools soooooo bad at what they do on so many levels like wtf the proto the servers the clients the ux the metadata issues like so much wrong

      Edit: and if anyone tells me to use XMPP I’ll slap them

      • mote@lemmy.ca
        10·
        11 hours ago

        It’s not entirely dystopian (just barely), we have newer messengers like SimpleX and DeltaChat (I/we use Delta) on the up and coming which deliver on all the same e2ee promises as Signal. It’s just network effects as usual, getting people to try is the real hurdle.

        What they share in common (mostly) is the architecture - they’re built natively decentralized, utilizing caching relays with no single source of truth, or device of truth, to be used to create a profile of you like a phone number does. Encryption keys owned by the user and no single servers. Generally this is the Nostr design as well, so we have 3 different teams all focusing on the same natively decentralized architecture patterns.

          • BurgerBaron@quokk.auEnglish
            3·
            7 hours ago

            At this rate Canada would probably ban anything they can’t get records from eventually if it got popular enough. I hate this timeline.

          • Sneezycat@sopuli.xyz
            3·
            10 hours ago

            I started self-hosting xmpp recently, and the calls work perfectly! You don’t need to self-host either, there are plenty of public servers.

  • toofpic@lemmy.world
    8·
    10 hours ago

    I don’t understand why an email registration is not an option? it was the default from when online services and apps appeared in the first place, and until about 5 years ago (depending on types of services/apps), and it’s security and anonymity was purely based on you using your “main” address or a throwaway.

    • scytale@piefed.zipEnglish
      8·
      9 hours ago

      The article says their main reason is spam/abuse, as requiring a phone number adds some sort of gate to lessen that. Emails are easier to create en-masse. I don’t agree with using phone numbers either, I’m just relaying their reasons.

    • refalo@programming.dev
      9·
      10 hours ago

      I would guess the sudden influx of massive amounts of traffic would force them to charge for the service, and they don’t want to do that. Requiring a phone number, while invasive to some, does cut down on a tremendous amount of automated/bot/spam traffic.