Privacy

42399 readers

839 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

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

If it ask for your phone number its not private. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 day ago by lunatique@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

121 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Nowadays, a majority of apps require you to sign up with your email or even worse your phone number. If you have a phone number attached to your name, meaning you went to a cell service/phone provider, and you gave them your ID, then no matter what app you use, no matter how private it says it is, it is not private. There is NO exception to this. Your identity is instantly tied to that account.

Signal is not private. I recommend Simplex or another peer to peer onion messaging app. They don't require email or phone number. So as long as you protect your IP you are anonymous

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] SteleTrovilo@beehaw.org 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Signal stores the hash of the phone number. So you can query them for a specific phone number, but are unable to figure out phone numbers based on the hashes (outside of brute force - trying every 12-digit phone number).

And after doing that, you learn "this person uses/used Signal", with no information about particular messages whatsoever.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Okay, I was not aware that it was only the hash of the phone number. I was under the impression that it was the phone number itself.