I get the impression that most people don't understand how important metadata such as phone numbers is when it comes to privacy.
For example, by requiring phone numbers, Signal, despite its good encryption, inherently builds a social graph. The server operators, or anyone who gets that data, can see a map of who is talking to whom. The content is secure, but the connections are not.
🧵
Yogthos
in reply to Yogthos • • •Yogthos
in reply to Yogthos • • •Worse, the act of seeking out encrypted communication is itself a red flag. It’s a perfect filter: Show me everyone paranoid enough to use crypto. You’re basically raising your hand.
So, in a twisted way, Signal being a tool for private conversations, makes it a perfect machine for mapping associations and identifying targets. The fact that it operates using a centralized server located in the US should worry people far more than it seems to.
Yogthos
in reply to Yogthos • • •The kicker is that thanks to gag orders, companies are legally forbidden from telling you if the feds come knocking for this data*. So even if Signal’s intentions are pure, we’d never know how the data it collects is being used. The potential for abuse is baked right into the phone-number requirement.
* washingtonpost.com/technology/…
Parade du Grotesque 💀
in reply to Yogthos • • •WhatsApp is encrypted end-to-end.
Mainly because they took Signal code and reused it.
Yet everyone uses WhatsApp, even though the secret ingredient they added to the Signal 'sauce' is maintaining the social graph of their users for their corporate masters (Meta).
The very meta data that Signal very carefully does not collect and therefore cannot communicate to abusive gov.
Yogthos
in reply to Parade du Grotesque 💀 • • •Yogthos
Unknown parent • • •@comradetrace Sealed Sender does not actually address the problem because you can still analyze metadata outside the encrypted message. The server still sees the sender's IP address when the device connects, linking the message to a specific user.
It can also perform traffic analysis; by observing the timing and recipients of messages, it can infer who is talking to whom, even if the sender's identity isn't on the digital envelope.
It's just smoke and mirrors.
Yogthos
Unknown parent • • •@jamey as I've explained here, sealed sender does not actually solve the problem social.marxist.network/@yogtho…
Yogthos
2025-10-09 22:05:09