Comment by newscracker
2 years ago
I like the concept of Signal usernames not being public either, and that they’re only a means to tell others how to find and contact them. I can’t wait for this to be rolled out.
It’s not clear to me if it’d be possible to prevent the “contact joined Signal” messages if someone else has the phone number in one’s contacts. That would be a huge thing.
For a little more historical context, with this change Signal has now solved the problems that became widespread during the protests in Hong Kong in 2019 — someone else (authorities) adding random phone numbers to their contacts list, opening a chat app (such as Signal or Telegram) and finding if that person uses that app. Telegram solved this swiftly by adding more privacy controls, [1] while Signal had other priorities.
There's new phone number privacy settings for "Who can see my number?" and "Who can find me by number?", both having "Everyone" and "Nobody" settings. I assume disabling both should stop it from messaging people, although not sure if you can set it quickly enough after registering.