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A comment on Signal Public Username Testing (Staging Environment). Parent comment

Re:Signal Public Username Testing (Staging Environment) by btreecat on Wednesday November 08, 2023 @08:43PM (#38199908)
Because your account is currently your phone number, so if they want to open the service to a limited number of power users, it makes sense to restrict it to folks who already are signal users, IMO.
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Re:Signal Public Username Testing (Staging Environment) by thaumasiotes on Wednesday November 08, 2023 @11:22PM (#38201167)
You don't see any conflict between that and the claim "The only thing Signal knows about a user is when they registered and their last login time"?
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Re:Signal Public Username Testing (Staging Environment) by Nekit1234007 on Thursday November 09, 2023 @02:39AM (#38202189)
s/user/phone number/
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Re:Signal Public Username Testing (Staging Environment) by btreecat on Thursday November 09, 2023 @07:14AM (#38204023)
Not at all, a user is a phone number.

Do you have a recommendation on how they would prevent fraud and abuse w/o using a phone number while also maintaining the same level of low friction?

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Re:Signal Public Username Testing (Staging Environment) by thaumasiotes on Thursday November 09, 2023 @08:02AM (#38204448)
What fraud and abuse? They can prevent fraud and abuse by doing anything, including by doing nothing, because those aren't concepts that apply to their product.
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Re:Signal Public Username Testing (Staging Environment) by Arnt on Thursday November 09, 2023 @01:14PM (#38208575)
Spam is one kind of abuse.
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Re:Signal Public Username Testing (Staging Environment) by thaumasiotes on Thursday November 09, 2023 @08:40PM (#38214008)
So? What's the threat model? How does having phone numbers help?
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Re:Signal Public Username Testing (Staging Environment) by Arnt on Friday November 10, 2023 @09:24AM (#38219209)
You're making assertions about what Signal needs, and you're doing it without knowing their threat model.
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Re:Signal Public Username Testing (Staging Environment) by Vinnl on Thursday November 09, 2023 @05:09AM (#38203121)
As I understand it, the phone number requirement won't be going away - it's just the requirement to share it with your contacts that they're abolishing.
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Re:Signal Public Username Testing (Staging Environment) by btreecat on Thursday November 09, 2023 @07:13AM (#38204011)
Seems like the right level of tradeoff to prevent abuse and enabling privacy, did you have a different expectation in terms of balance?
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Re:Signal Public Username Testing (Staging Environment) by Vinnl on Thursday November 09, 2023 @10:19AM (#38206091)
No, that's perfectly fine for me too, just wanted to be accurate and manage expectations :)

(In fact, I do still expect public phone numbers to be the "default", i.e. encouraged, experience, because of its viral properties. This is also fine by me, as I want Signal to be used by as many people as possible.)

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