this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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Privacy
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Anyone knows about creating easily a signal account without smartphone ? Telegram does that and I have tremondous people that would use that instead of whatsapp/telegram and that don't understand matrix or even Mattermost π
Telegram does that? how? you need a phone number, so essentially a smartphone too. or is it common in your community to use feature phones, so that the problem is no registration on PC?
No Telegram can do registration with just a simple text message + pc, no need of smartphones just simple dumb phone
Assuming you have a computer to get on here, you could use an Android emulator like BlueStacks.
But you need a simcard with this emulator to connect to signal, here I'm talking about getting a text message and then still have a signal account, or even better : only having an account but wirh email or norhing. I think it's not possible to have signal work the way you describe.
A phone number that can receive SMS is required, but it doesn't have to be associated with the device that's running Signal last I checked.
So you can have signal desktop on pc and activate it from there with a phone that only receives SMS ? I have a few people to tell so they can try then because this is a huge step for non-smartphone users. If anyone have a source on this btw I would be happy to read it !
I never said anything to that effect. The ancestor comment discussed running Signal for Android inside an Android emulator for account creation, after which it could be linked to Signal desktop.
Someone could presumably fork Signal desktop to allow the scenario you're describing, but I'm not aware of any such efforts.
Telegram too requires that you verify your phone number, right? So I took that as a given.
@rozlav donβt need a smartphone, but do need access to a telephone number. itβs an important anti spam measure. you never have to use or display it: can operate entirely with signal usernames instead