Signal Secure Backups

Am I still required to add a phone number to use signal? What's the point of that. Every single person in the USA (and probably world) is quickly and trivially de-anonymized with a phone number.

nobody has access to your phone number from your account, and when subpoenad they are unable to provide it:https://signal.org/bigbrother/

'the point' is spam protection, alas

This is the number one thing that is missing IMHO. I would gladly take it over back up options

That article is out of date. It says things like "Signal still knows nothing about you", but Signal collects every user's name, phone number, photo, and a list of their contacts and permanently stores that data in the cloud.

That data is only protected by a pin (which can be brute forced) and SGX which has a history of being leaky. Researchers even demonstrated that data could be collected from Signal at one point. There are very likely side channel attacks that would allow Signal, or the government to collect the data stored in the cloud.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250117232443/https://www.vice....

https://web.archive.org/web/20230519115856/https://community...