Signal Cooperates with Governments
The title of this is my belief. You can disagree all you want but I believe it and I will tell you why.In it's simplest form, I believe this because Signal requires you to not only give and verify your phone number to get a Signal account, but ALSO requires you to maintain access to that phone number and will sometimes force you to re-verify that phone number.
Back in the good old days before invasive government spying on everything was as pervasive as it is currently you could just sign up for a chat service and use it with, -gasp-, no verification of anything! Just sign up and begin contacting people! OMG amazing.
Over the years and much username camping this eventually led systems to begin rate limiting account registrations. Why though? What was wrong with simply an increasing identifier number such as how ICQ or Slashdot did it?
Because they want to track you.
The first change from basically anonymous account creation and usage was to demand an email address. It's pretty easy to make a nearly or fully anonymous email account, so...
They later changed to demanding a phone number. Not just any phone number either. One associated with a physical cellphone that can be triangulated with towers and associated with a billing address. Phone verifications systems these days will not let you register with a temporary phone number and often not with a VOIP number.
Why did they do this? So that they can know who you are when you are chatting, and who you communicate with. Governments around the world track who you communicate with.
Signal claims to keep you secure. They DO NOT claim to not tell governments who you are and who you communicate with.
And of course they don't. Because they are a company that needs to deal with money. They aren't your friendly anyonymous anarchist hacker. They are a business. For them to be able to do business in these countries they MUST cooperate when required with the federal government ( or whatever the equivalent is in each country ).
They make a big show of saying your messages are end-to-end enccrypted and secure.
But they do not claim any of the following:
- To do anything to prevent Apple App Store or Google Play Store from sending a modified version of the app to you when requested to by the government that can then monitor all your messages.
- To not share your identifiers, phone numbers, and recent contacts with government when requested.
Do you see my problem? Let me put this another way: ANY company that is official and making money from running a producct, such as Signal does, has to do these things.
They cannot be trusted to keep you anonymous or who you communicate with anonymous, because they cannot function as a company if they refused to do that when governments demand it. AND when that happens? It's going to be connected with an order from the government not to tell anyone they are doing it.
You might say "no bro, that's paranoia talking." Tell yourself whatever you want. If you want to be monitored and for it to be monitored who you talk to and when, that's your problem.
If you don't want that? Use something better than Signal, and use some common sense.
If a supposedly safe and secure chat system demands your phone number and then demands you continue having that phone number to use the service, then they are absolutely tracking you and reporting to the government about you whenever the government insists that they do.
As usual AI has all sorts of bullshit to say about this post and says I am making claims I can't prove. The government operates this way. They want you to convince yourself they aren't monitoring you, or aren't likely monitoring you, or aren't doing the shady crap they've been exposed time and again for doing.
Don't be a dumbass. Think like a hacker. ONLY trust systems with full source code from every side where nothing can push a modified version to you. Where the whole standard is open, and nodes are run by the public. Systems that are essentially a mesh of the public running a shared protocol, not something dependent on trusting a company.
If you trust a company, any company, you are a fucking idiot to think that is going to make you safe and secure from prying eyes.
It's fine to submit to being monitored by your government. It's the norm. It's expected of you. Be a good little sheep. Bhaaaaa.