That risk is not just theoretical. I made a test account (on another service; not Signal) using a free anonymous SMS number. A few months later, the account had been hijacked.

Of course, if it's a disposable account, then having it hijacked after you're done with it might be a good thing.

Just wear a face mask and sunglasses and hoodie when using the pay phone. That way you'll blend-in and be anonymous

”It’s important to maintain control of this phone number."

I strongly feel that this is false.

and then you can anonymously chat with yourself because no one else will bother installing that favorite app of yours!

I've been trying to get people off WhatsApp for who knows how many years now. With Signal, i have a chance of convincing people. When you start talking about matrix or session or SimpleX or ???, people stay on WhatsApp

It's there for a reason. You can't easily create a spam waves if you need a phone number to create an account. And they added usernames now, so you don't need to share your phone number with people you want to talk to. It's just there to create an account and can be hidden after that.

There is Session, that uses UUIDs for names with no phone number requirement, which is basically a fork of Signal with decentralized Loki on top of it.

And - gasp! - you can do it from your computer directly! No Android emulators, no inconvenient command-line client!

That might work in most places, but there are countries that only sell pre-paid cards with ID registration.

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.

It's fine for a temporary signal account, but if you let the number expire, then someone else gets assigned that number, and that new person wants to use Signal, they'll get your account.

They can't see your old messages, but they'll get any new ones instead of you.

I think anonymity is heavily coupled with privacy, if someone knows my account is linked to my phone number, that's a very strong form of fingerprinting. Even if E2E encryption is perfect, it takes one bad actor on the the reciever end of my message to both identify who I am through my phone number and leak my message. If just my message is leaked and there's no fingerprint leading to me, I am still safe. Real example: It took Proton leaking the IP address of a climate activist to the state to get them arrested, not a hole in their E2E mail encryption. A phone number is potentially an even stronger identifier.

If I asked 10 people to give me their home address, they're not going to care whether someone defines that as privacy or anonymity. But signal's reliance on phone number's (which are easily linked to your identity and home address in most countries) as the primary identifier means giving away just that.

Why do people feel the need to split hairs with these terms?

In some countries, you need an ID to buy a sim card, so it's linked to your identity, even if you pay cash.

So what you're saying is that you don't have an anonymous signal account..

Same