Hey, howdy, hallo,
I’ve used Signal for a while now, but one of my biggest complaints has been the necessity to divulge your phone number to chat with other users. That is no longer the case. Usernames have been available for a couple of months, and there are a few specific features I wanted to mention. If you’re not familiar with Signal, or have never used it before, you can learn more about it here.
➡️ One-directional
If you initiate a chat with someone using their username, they will not see your username. This can help preserve your privacy, as the individual you message can’t accidentally or purposefully leak your username.
👕 You can change them!
I have a love/hate relationship with phone numbers. I understand why they’re still widely used, but they can be a privacy nightmare. Generally, phone numbers are deeply associated with your identity. It’s difficult to have multiple numbers, and changing them can be a nightmare.
With usernames, you can easily change them. When you change your username, your old chats will still continue to work. It’s useful to think of usernames as only the initial means of contact. Once contact is established, the username is no longer relevant. For example, if you give your username to someone and later regret it because they post it online or share it with others, you can simply change your username and block that individual. It’s like getting a new identity. Much easier than changing your phone number.
🥸 Hiding your phone number
You still need a phone number to sign up for a Signal account, but after that, it never needs to be used again. The privacy settings now allow you to set ‘Who can find me by number’ and ‘Who can see my number’ to ’nobody.’ I like this because now I can fully control incoming message access. Only those with my specific username can contact me, and my phone number can’t be used.
Signal isn’t for everyone, I know some people who utterly despise it. But, I think it works well for many people. Something interesting I want to look into is SimpleX Chat. You can self-host your server to retain full ownership over your communication.
I’d be interested to hear about your experience if you’ve tried SimpleX? What did you think? Are you self-hosting a server, or did you use one of the servers they offer?
I hope everyone is having a great year so far, I’ll see you next month!
-Josh
This site has some neat photos of vending machines in Japan.
"Storage is cheap. Time is scarce. Hoard accordingly."
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