Free and Open Source Software

17941 readers

24 users here now

If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Gaywallet@beehaw.org

alyaza@beehaw.org

153

Signal Blog: Keep your phone number private with Signal usernames (signal.org)

submitted 9 months ago by UNIX84@beehaw.org to c/foss@beehaw.org

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Finally, we can have usernames in Signal instead of giving our phone number to everybody.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] jawsua@lemmy.one 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There's anonymity and privacy. This keeps you private from other users, and they already keep you private from themselves other than the initial sign up. What this service isn't, and never has been, is anonymous. They don't want that and there are big usability issues with an extended anonymous user base. Decide for yourself what you need

[–] debanqued@beehaw.org 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Anonymity is part of privacy.

Specifically, anonymity is confidentiality of identity. Confidentiality is part of privacy, which is a broad concept. So when a tool or mechanism works against anonymity, it works against privacy. It may not work against a privacy aspect that you care about, but it’s privacy nonetheless.