this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2021
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Privacy
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Signal has mandatory phone numbers linked to you, which is probably the worst thing for privacy. In most countries phone numbers are tied to your identity, and you can easily find someone's name and current address with a phone number.
Lets assume that signal is correctly e2ee encrypting message data, but their database can't encrypt the sender and recipient phone numbers. Its hosted in the US in a centralized place, so we can assume the US government has sender and recipient phone numbers, and message timestamps, and from that can easily build a social graph of connections between people.
You and I can't even use signal, because you'd have to tell me your phone number, which would give me your full name.
This is why I favor Matrix, I don't have to give anybody any info and it would be hard for the government to build a social graph of my contacts if we use VPN's or Tor to connect.
afaik matrix stores your data, messages (often unencrypted) on the server you signed up on. signal doesn't store anything