It creates a cost for spammers. They have to have an account with a Telco, which isn’t free, which in a lot of countries comes with some sort of National ID to register. That’s the reason.
Comment on Time to get serious with E2E encrypted messaging
Ulrich@feddit.org 2 months agoSignal requires a phone number on setup.
It is dumb and annoying and inconvenient but doesn’t affect its use or privacy.
AnotherDirtyAnglo@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Ulrich@feddit.org 2 months ago
VoIP account costs virtually nothing.
Anivia@feddit.org 2 months ago
Lol, let me introduce you to smspva.com
fangleone2526@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It affects its use for me definitely. I don’t want to have a phone number. At all.
Ulrich@feddit.org 2 months ago
How do you even exist without a phone number. How do you get cellular data? Does the government not require you to have one? Your employer? What about all the services that require one?
fangleone2526@lemmy.world 2 months ago
To be clear, I have a phone number, but I do not WANT to have one. Most aspects of my life I have removed my phone number from. There are still a few services ( like signal! ) which requires one, and I cope. Cellular data is also something worth avoiding, from a privacy perspective. It is very possible to live a life where you’re never very far from wifi, especially in a city. I do not currently do this, but would love to one day.
Petter1@lemm.ee 2 months ago
How is public wifi more secure than mobile internet?
For both, you need minimum a VPN connection outha there (to your home ideally, where you are in control of filters etc.) to get some privacy.
Telorand@reddthat.com 2 months ago
I have to wonder if you could use a burner number and just disable it after setting up your username
mipadaitu@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think you’d have a theoretical issue if the next person who got that number also tried to set up a signal account.
Telorand@reddthat.com 2 months ago
You might be right. I’ll have to go double check, but I don’t think that you can just set up a new account with the same number without the password you set up.