Privacy

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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.

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If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
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Signal tests usernames that keep your phone number private (www.bleepingcomputer.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Privacy and anonimity are different things. As long as nobody besides you and the indented destination(s) has access to the content of your communication, that communication maintains privacy, even if everyone sees that it's you talking.

Also, and this is something I mention all the time, the only information this gives is that you use signal. Besides that, as soon as anybody else registered your phone in their contact list, your phone number is already known and associated with you considering that many apps (like all the meta ones) gain access to the contact list and the chance that anybody who has your phone number uses one of those is almost 100%.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

App-accessible contact lists is the original sin of smartphones. As a result, a few powerful corporations know the social graph of entire countries. The handful of people who make efforts to stay anonymous be damned - they're in the database too thanks to their friends. This one infuriating feature makes decent privacy all but impossible.