Stop using real phone number

[RandomTokens]

The majority of people I use signal with are met online, not people that I currently have ever met in person. This leaves a huge gaping hole in my privacy when I have to give out my phone number or when I encourage others to join so we can communicate. Instead of giving true phone numbers out why can we not have a feature that allows a randomly generated token to be associated with your account so it can be copy and pasted quickly and easily to a person through social media and then that contact can paste it into their signal account to add me. This would also allow for the shift away from phone numbers in general and more so towards the signal account itself since people change numbers a lot… this would help individuals with masked numbers from apps, physical burner phones from stores, people who get new numbers in general from their phone provider… it also allows for true privacy where nobody has to expose anything about themselves. There are no cons that I can think of, only pros.

I’ve had many people turn down signal invites because of this reason. There are competitor apps that do not force you to give your real phone number out, it’s a major privacy concern.

[u32i64]

Multiple topics about this already exist, please do not create duplicates. Just a few:

• Registration without a phone number
• '@' usernames - let's throw phone numbers in the dustbin of history
• Hide phone number entirely

In fact, this is already being worked on:

Hide phone number entirely

Actively working on it Moving away from phone numbers is one of those things that’s like pulling on a thread. It required us to create a new groups system (that we’ve just launched!), a new backup system (also launched not long ago), and a slew of other fundamental changes in the app. One of the last major hurdles is to deprecate our old groups system, since that system depends on phone numbers for keeping track of group membership. Definitely has been a long road, but the end is getting cl…

[RandomTokens]

Thank you for responding

[th7803]

@RandomTokens

There are no cons that I can think of, only pros.

One fairly major con to remember is: there are a lot of people out there, who if upon installing a new messaging app, don’t immediately see a list of friends using it - will automatically assume that noone uses it and proceed to uninstall/forget about it.

That’s precisely why Signal started with phone numbers in the place, and why every time I try out an XMPP client - I look around for a bit and wonder who I can actually message with it.

[Gunter]

@th7803

One fairly major con to remember is: there are a lot of people out there, who if upon installing a new messaging app, don’t immediately see a list of friends using it - will automatically assume that noone uses it and proceed to uninstall/forget about it.

This is true but they could always have the threema approach and make it so you can add a phone number and choose to be found by it which could help the problem. The current problem like stated in the original post is that if you people change number and if you get a new number you essentially lose your whole account and especially with more stuff being synced to the cloud that you don’t wanna lose it’s gonna become more of an issue Imo.