this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
299 points (95.4% liked)
Privacy
31872 readers
494 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
It confirms that your number is valid and in use.
You can check that in the phone app too. Hit new message, enter the numer, hit "New message to... " and it'll tell you if it isn't known. There is rate limiting in that function, you'd need a lot of signal accounts to sweep all phone numbers.
You could also try signing up to signal using the number you want to check.
Neither way however you would get the signal name or profile pic of the number if I understand it correctly, that would get sent if they reply to you.
It's a necessary feature if you are using phone numbers. Signal has to tell you if your message has any chance of being received.
I don't want to message someones number, to find out they never got my message and don't have signal a few days later, and I don't want to message them via whatsapp too, giving them a chance to use that when they have signal.
I mean, ever heard of a phonebook?