Unless you’re in a position to audit what the Signal server does with that data, which you’re not

I don’t have to be. Lots of people, public and private, who are far more knowledgeable than me, already have. You’re assuming they’re doing something nefarious but you have zero evidence to back that up. You’re just spewing nonsense here. The fact that you keep repeating this nonsense over and over isn’t going to make it true baby Goebbels.

The fact that you don’t understand there is no trust, clearly shows who’s actually embarrassing themselves.

Your phone number is an identifying piece of information about the person who is sending and receiving messages. That’s what metadata is.

It’s not. And I’m tired of repeating myself.

The content of the message is the data, the identifying information is metadata

Once again, no one has access to the content of the messages. Ergo, there is no metadata. Maybe spend a bit of time actually learning about the subject instead of trolling here.

Theoretically no, all of your messages stored on Beeper servers are encrypted. But they will get all your metadata.

But I wouldn’t worry about that anyway since Discord not only has access to all of your messages but sells them to companies to process for AI. So that’d be the far easier and faster route for them.

The phone number is not associated with your account, it IS your account. In order for there to be metadata, there would have to be other data associated with it, which we’ve already established that there is not.

the phone number is data about the user sending the message

No it isn’t. If someone gets information associated with that phone number, they get it from somewhere else, not Signal. Let me know if you need me to use smaller words to explain this to you.

Signal server has to keep a graph of connections between the accounts in order to route messages between them.

No it doesn’t. You’re making it very clear that have absolutely no clue regarding the subject you’re attempting to debate here.

No, my entire argument is based on basic security practices that anybody who’s ever dealt with security would understand.

No it isn’t. Please stop embarrassing yourself.

What part of “there is zero data associated with your phone number” are you struggling to understand, specifically?

It is not based on trust. It’s called “zero knowledge encryption” for a reason. You don’t have to trust them, because you give them nothing to trust them with.

How about literally any form of evidence?

Metadata is understood to be data that’s associated with messages being sent

That’s incorrect. Metadata is literally “data about the data”. There is not data associated with the phone number (data). The fact that you don’t even understand this shows that you have no business making uninformed comments on this subject.

One has to be an incredibly gullible individual to actually believe this.

No, one just needs a rudimentary understanding of how encryption works. Actually looking at the subpoenas sent from Signal is helpful, though.

Anybody with a functioning brain can understand that this graph is highly valuable to intelligence agencies in the US

Anybody who actually pays attention can see that there is no graph. A graph has interconnected points. There are no connections in Signal.

Your entire argument is based on wild hypotheticals and conspiracy theories and you have zero evidence of anything nefarious, or you would have provided it already.

Thank you for continuing to not put forward any sort of legitimate retort and responding only with insults instead. Super helpful.

Not only is it possible, but people are already doing it.

Depends if you consider Signal “popular”, because based on your own link, the only information they provide is:

No message content., Date and time a user registered. Last date of a user’s connectivity to the service.

There’s privacy and then there’s user experience. UX on Matrix is awful. Not to mention Matrix collects all the metadata, and the vast majority of it sits on a single server (matrix.org), which is owned by a private company and subject to subpoenas.

I would encourage you to think critically about the nonsense being shared here. Do some research and read about people who actually know things about security and you’ll find a common pattern: basically all of them hold Signal up as a gold standard in privacy and security.

I’ve seen plenty of people advocate using Signal as the best option for privacy.

Because it is the gold standard, and recognized by many as much.

And any time there is a criticism of Signal then then brigades of people inexplicably appear to vigorously defend it.

Allow me to explain: by making people feel unsafe using it, you are actually making them less safe.

I agree it’s a problem, but not for any of the reasons you listed. A phone number is not metadata, it’s just data. In order to request information associated with your phone number, they would have to know it already, because there’s no other identifier. In order to be metadata, there would have to be other information connected to that data, which there isn’t (in Signal), other than the date you signed up and the last time you connected to their server. They don’t know who you talk to or when, thus no network connections.

Man I don’t even have the time to break down all these very clearly wrong insinuations. There’s no reason to believe Signal collects metadata, and every reason to believe they don’t. They’ve been served subpoenas and they shared them, as well as their responses, publicly, and the only thing they included was when the last time the user connected to their server.

I think the point is not that Telegram (the company) sucks, it is that Telegram (the app) sucks. A proper messenger like Signal leaves the provider with no information to hand over.

Many people still seem to be under the false impression that Telegram is private, so it’s worth spreading around.