this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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Privacy

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Yes, you can use Signal without sharing your personal phone number. Here’s how I did it.

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[–] Cobrachicken@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Usually those numbers fall back into the provider's pool after a time of not regular usage and get sold again, at least here in Europe.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The twist they've introduced in this article is they're using the registration lock feature, which means you have a signal pin enabled, so as long as the account doesn't go idle for 7 days even somebody who gets the phone number can't use signal.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

7 days?!? Jesus can we get at least a few years?? Thats worse than WhatsApp's 2 weeks.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 5 points 4 months ago

The fundamental problem is the signal foundation sees the phone number as the identity. If you don't have control of the phone number, you don't really have control of the identity.

The good news is, they let you change your phone number and maintain your contacts. But if the phone number the account is currently registered to get assigned to somebody else and you don't change it, then you're playing the 7-day roulette