Comment by boobsbr
2 years ago
> Now, you can connect on Signal without needing to hand out your phone number. (You will still need a phone number to register for Signal.)
Why is it so hard for Signal and Telegram to not require a phone number as an account identifier?
I don't need to verify anything by phone or even email. If I lose the password, the account is lost, so be it. I'll create a new one.
If I really want to, then I'll set up email/phone.
Unfortunately, spam exists and phone verification is one of the least-bad-way to ensure that the user is a real person (there are other options, but it really is one that has many advantages).
Given that Signal does not have access (by design) to much information about their users when they use the service, they can't really fight spam once accounts are created. You could do spam detection on the client and privacy-preserving voting in order to ban spammers, but the UX would be very poor and that opens a whole new can of worms.
This reasoning doesn't make sense to me. A spammer can make an account, but how would they contact me if they don't know my account handle?
Even if that leaks, the handle should be changeable, and the spam issue could be completely mitigated by having a tab for first time "message requests" separate from the normal inbox.
I can't take a private messenger seriously when they require an identifier that's linked to your government-issued ID in many parts of the world.
> I can't take a private messenger seriously when they require an identifier that's linked to your government-issued ID in many parts of the world.
Well that's a whole separate rabbit hole.
Governments shouldn't be requiring something as simple as a SIM card and phone number to be directly linked to a government ID. The right to privacy is a hell of a thing and the only reason a government would require this is to be able to spy on or track everyone.
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By bulk messaging every possible phone number... and you can't detect that because signal can't read the messages to look for spam.
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Because it’s resilient against spam, and extremely easy to recover.
They're resilient to spam, but often impossible to recover.
I had a spare SIM card that friends and family use when visiting from abroad. It's been unused for 90 days and has been deactivated. The number is lost, and irrecoverable. A friend had created a (second) Signal account with this number and can no longer log into new devices.
As a more mundane example: If I accidentally drop my phone into a river, the SIM is gone forever, and so is that line.
Sure, you can have a contract line which allows recovery. Depending on where you live, these can be several times more expensive than a regular pre-paid line.
You don't need a "contract" for recovery, just an account.
E.g. in the US, Mint Mobile is $15/mo. and is prepaid in the sense that you buy blocks of months at a time. But if you lose your SIM they'll still send you another one with the same phone number.
So no, if you lose your SIM you don't necessarily lose your number, even if it's prepaid. That only happens if you're buying your SIM as an "anonymous" one-off purchase, which is not what most people do these days. Not to mention the increasing prevalence of eSIMs.
"Often impossible"? Not my experience at all. Maybe it would be more problematic with prepaid SIMs, but why would a monthly billed account get deactivated?
You lose your SIM? You go to a branch, verify your identity, and get a fresh new SIM for your line. There's no more straightforward and surefire way to recover any other type of account as of today.
Easy to recover your Signal account using the phone number. Not saying it's easy to recover a phone number.
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Email is easier to recover and unlike a phone number you can actually own and control your email. There is no way of actually owning a phone number.
> You can actually own and control your email
Email isn't easier to recover at all unless you own and control it which nobody does.
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Apart from Spam, phone number is also one of the few unique identifiers, which is valuable to, among other things, to ID you cross-channel and show you ads.
It is easy to create a new email, but not so easy to create and keep a new phone-number.