You can not buy a sim without KYC in almost all countries. Also most users will not realize these consequences and will just assume the defaults on Signal protect them with their every day phone number and SIM.

Also facebook/instagram/whatsapp/telegram/etc are not trying to advertise themselves for the high risk use cases Signal is actively promoted for. I obviously do not recommend anyone use those either, regardless.

Matrix is all I suggest for most people.

> You can not buy a sim without KYC in almost all countries.

I'd be curious to see stats on this. At least in the US, it is very easy to buy a SIM and sign up for a pre-paid plan with zero KYC.

The US is actually the only exception I am aware of world wide which gives us a distorted view of this problem.

Unless things have changed in the last few years, there are apparently countries in Europe that don't require registration: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9ziqfi/european_cou...

And that's a quite high regulation part of the world, I'd be surprised if South American or African countries were stricter.

Requiring SIM registration is nearly universal outside of Europe and NA.

https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/sim-card-regist...

Great link, thanks. Interesting that my intuition was off, although I suppose it makes sense that regulations are loosest in countries with the strongest speech and privacy protections. Although I'm skeptical of how well the rules on paper are enforced in some of the countries listed as requiring registration. I have seen SIMs for sale at roadside stalls in a couple countries listed as requiring registration, and I don't think they were checking ID...

But it looks like the official answer is 36:

> Those without any SIM-card registration requirements are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Cabo Verde, Comoros, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Kiribati, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Maldives, Malta, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Moldova, Namibia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vanuatu.

In some places, the sale itself doesn't require anything, but you need to go to the provider and show an ID to activate.

You need a government issued ID to get mobile service many places. You can’t just get a SIM in the same way you get a burner email address.

> still the #1 IM app that I recommend to "normal people"

What app do you recommend to HN types? (I'm getting ready to switch messaging platforms. All my friends use iMessage and I'm so tired of typing on my phone at them. They can be lured over to something else with the promise of encryption.)

Try Element.

Effectively the same crypto as Signal but you can be anonymous as needed. Also decentralized with many app options.

And if Element is not the desired application to use matrix, then there are plenty of others, and available across many device and OS platforms: https://matrix.org/clients/

...Of course, Element remains the oldest and likely still most feature-full app.

I haven't really looked into Matrix. I appreciate the nudge!

Beyond any research that you undertakevaround matrix, i would add: while its not new (having existed for several years now), its popularity has increased quite a bit in the last year or 2. So in my opinion its still early days. Althougj its evolved quite nicely. So some rough edges might be encountered - more so on the client/apps side, less on protocol side - but as the superfan that i am, i really feel it represents the future of distributed messaging, which one use-case is chat. Good luck!