Privacy ≠ Anonymity ≠ Security

Because it's centralized, I prefer SimpleX.

I think it's important to remember de difference between being private and being anonymous. Signal IS private. It's not anonymous. The same is true for many other apps/services.

Personally I like to be private. I don't really need to be anonymous.

Reduce spam bot accounts and other malware, as well as to allow for user discovery so you can find your contacts more easily. It's not designed to be an anonymous service, just a private one.

The amount of trolls in this thread that either try to spew false information intentionally or just have no idea what they are talking about is insane.

If you are worried about what data (including your phone number) law enforcement can recieve (if they have your specific user ID, which is not equal to your phone number) from the Signal company check this: https://propertyofthepeople.org/document-detail/?doc-id=21114562 Tldr: It's the date of registration and last time user was seen online. No other information, Signal just doesn't have any other and this is by design.

If you want to know more about how they accomplish that feat you can check out the sealed sender feature: https://nerdschalk.com/what-is-sealed-sender-in-signal-and-should-you-enable-it/

or the private contact discovery system: https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/

Also as Signal only requires a valid phone number for registration you might try some of these methods (not sure if they still work): https://theintercept.com/2024/07/16/signal-app-privacy-phone-number/

Signal fills an incredibly important spot in a spectrum of privacy and usability where it's extremely usable without sacrificing very much privacy. Sure, to the most concerned privacy enthusits it's not the best, but it's a hell of a lot easier to convince friends and family to use Signal than something like Matrix.