schweizer
Yeah! I get what you're thinking. At first, I was confused too. But after testing Molly (Signal) and reading some policies, I realized one thing: Signal does use your phone number. Yes, I’m not denying that this is a privacy concern.
But, we need to understand that Signal is not a 100% privacy-based solution. Nothing in this world is perfect, and truly perfect services are rarely free. Even if they are free, maintaining them requires resources, coordination, and protection from bad actors—politics and malicious users are always a threat.
So, we have to move forward until a perfect solution exists. From what I read, Signal only uses your phone number for initial account creation. After that, users can switch to Username + PIN, and from then on, they can log in using only the username and PIN.
I understand that the phone number is the main ID, acting as a primary key that links everything—including PINs and usernames. Yes, that could be considered a privacy violation. But we are missing one point: we are not relying on one service forever.
If Signal ever exposes user IDs, sells data, or collects metadata, eventually a new service will appear somewhere on the web. For example, Elon Musk is building XChat, a standalone app under X Corp, which won’t require phone numbers.
Until then, Signal is the best option available with all features working. If we insist on perfect privacy, most other users won’t be like us, they live “on the surface,” sacrificing privacy for convenience. To coexist, we need features like status updates, VoIP, chat, disappearing messages, etc.
For instance, GrapheneOS also prioritizes privacy and security. But over time, it adapts to support mainstream apps so users can live in the “surface” world. Otherwise, GrapheneOS wouldn’t survive.