this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
107 points (99.1% liked)
Privacy
32722 readers
1285 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
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Your phone number is an identifying piece of information about the person who is sending and receiving messages. That's what metadata is. The content of the message is the data, the identifying information is metadata. Maybe spend a bit of time actually learning about the subject instead of trolling here.
@yogthos @Ulrich It is also besides the point because whether he wants to call it metadata or not, Signal still has that information.
Signal might well share every subpoena they can. However, NSLs can come with gag orders. Even if they wanted to tell you what was going on, they couldn't.
Exactly, what we call this information is entirely besides the point. What matters is that it's being collected, and nobody outside the people operating the server knows how this information is used. If somebody says they trust Whisper and make a conscious choice to share that information with the company that's perfectly fine. However, telling people that the problem doesn't exist is dangerously dishonest.
Do you think if they were giving away extra information in NSLs and witholding that information in public subpoenas that no one would ask questions or hold them accountable for that?
It's not. And I'm tired of repeating myself.
Once again, no one has access to the content of the messages. Ergo, there is no metadata. Maybe spend a bit of time actually learning about the subject instead of trolling here.
Yes, you continue repeating a demonstrably false statement. A very astute observation on your part.
Once again, nobody is talking about content of the messages. What's being said is that the identifying information about people sending and receiving messages is available to the server routing them. The fact that you continue ignoring this basic fact clearly shows that you're the one who's doing the trolling.
Trolling or ignorant. Or a secret third thing.
JWZ has had to go through the same kinds of circular conversations.
I find it fascinating that these people show up in every thread about Signal, and they just spam the same nonsense.
I like to think that it’s usually just because they’re socially invested in it.
It does very much feel like a cult.
Neither. I explained my/our rationale above. Your disinformation is making people unsafe.
Signal does not leak your phone number to anyone. You/they are just ignorant as to how the service works. Signal will notify you if someone YOU HAVE IN YOUR CONTACTS joins the network. It will not give you any of their personal information. Their ID will show up as whatever is already in your contacts.
How much personal information Signal does or does not reveal to other Signal users is not relevant to this conversation.
Then why did you bring it into the conversation?
I didn’t.
This conversation is about the the US security state. It’s about the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc.
LOL you did. The title of the link you shared is "signal leaks your phone number to everyone in your contacts".
I didn’t say that. You must be confusing me with someone else in this thread. But since you brought it up: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2017/03/signal-leaks-your-phone-number-to-everyone-in-your-contacts/
But I’m more concerned about the security state angle.
Edit to add: I see, yes, one of the links I posted did say that, which I highlighted above. But again I’m more interested in the fact that Signal is a product of Radio Free Asia, which is a US security state outfit. https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/signal-facing-collapse-after-cia-cuts-funding
....who are you trying to fool? It's there for everyone to see...?
As I already stated, this is incorrect. It's not how it works. And after publishing such obviously incorrect information, I wouldn't trust anything they said.
If you’re going to continue denying our lived experiences with Signal, why should we allow you continue commenting on our Lemmy instance?
Okay, so you are saying that now...? I honestly don't know how you expect anyone to take you seriously at this point.
I'm not denying your experience, I'm denying your interpretation of your experience. You don't get a special version of the app that's different from ours. They all work the same.
As I explained above, what you may have interpreted as Signal sharing your contact info was actually just Signal notifying all of the people that already have your contact information that you joined the service, using the information those people already have...
Given than I deleted Signal years ago now, I don’t much care about this phone number sharing/not sharing aspect.
But in case anyone does care, Moxie responded to jwz’s concerns in that ancient post: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2017/03/signal-leaks-your-phone-number-to-everyone-in-your-contacts/#comment-172865
If you don't care then stop arguing about it. Personally, I care very much about people spreading disinformation.
Yeah sorry: my bringing up JWZ as an example of past circular arguments I’ve come across devolved into a whole tangent thread I never meant to have.
Okay, you've sufficiently demonstrated not only that you don't know what you're talking about but also that you have no evidence to back it up and your only recourse is personal insults so I'm gonna call it a night.
The only one making claims without evidence here is you bud. What I said is that Signal requires users to submit their phone numbers, and that only people operating the server know how that information is handled. These are objective facts.
You made a baseless claim that Signal does not retain the phone numbers or use them to build graphs of users. This is a claim that cannot be proven, and you keep repeating it as fact. Either you are clueless or you're intentionally spreading misinformation.
So you've run out of personal insults and repetition and are just moving on to blatant lies now...
What lies are you referring to, please be specific.
For like 99.9% people, it definitely is.
What is what?
Well the first words of your own in your comment were "it's not," so...