Well there are alternatives to signal. Some use p2p, some use tor, some use a federated system of servers. None have the networking effect to be as secure and as popular as signal.
So if signal was privacy preserving, didn't show or tell contacts about others using the service, do you think it would be as popular? Or do you think we'd be discussing a different popular e2e encrypted app and complaining about the very features that made it popular?
Re:Signal is secure, as proven by hackers
by pwinnski on Friday October 07, 2022 @04:09PM
(#33126307)
It sounds like you want an app that sacrifices usability for a promise of security. That's fine, there are options. Of course, some are honeypots run by the US government, and you'd need to really really have an unusual threat model to warrant such care, but you do you.
You don't, because that's something that's fundamentally impossible to do in a privacy-preserving way - no way around it.
> If it's feasible for an end user, say 30 seconds of a phone's CPU, you can be sure that a spammer could generate millions.
You're picking overly conservative numbers for "feasible". Choose parameters such that it takes something like half an hour on a phone. Inconvenient? Yes, but privacy is inconvenient in general.
And yes, a spammer will still be able to generate lots of these fake identities, but now the cost is much higher, while the expected profit is roughly the same - and that's how you defeat spam.