this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
529 points (98.7% liked)

Privacy

31786 readers
391 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

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Some question to be honest. I cannot expect any privacy if I have to share my phone number.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Privacy and anonimity are different things. As long as nobody besides you and the indented destination(s) has access to the content of your communication, that communication maintains privacy, even if everyone sees that it's you talking.

Also, and this is something I mention all the time, the only information this gives is that you use signal. Besides that, as soon as anybody else registered your phone in their contact list, your phone number is already known and associated with you considering that many apps (like all the meta ones) gain access to the contact list and the chance that anybody who has your phone number uses one of those is almost 100%.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

App-accessible contact lists is the original sin of smartphones. As a result, a few powerful corporations know the social graph of entire countries. The handful of people who make efforts to stay anonymous be damned - they're in the database too thanks to their friends. This one infuriating feature makes decent privacy all but impossible.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

They do their best to use the number in ways no one but your contacts who use Signal can actually see what that number is, to be fair. And you're still private either way. What a phone number breaks is anonymity, which is something they don't explicitely claim to give you. (I think)