this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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You can use a username only for finding and adding friends, you only need the phone number to create an account. That's probably because Signal started as an alternative to Messages (or whatever it was called back then), so you could send SMS if you wanted, or secure messages to friends w/ Signal. The whole point was to be a gentle transition from SMS to private messaging. However, they eventually dropped the SMS feature, but it seems they kept the phone number as username thing.
It kind of sucks, but I think that's a reasonable limitation since the vast majority of people using this service will have a phone number. You could probably even sign up for a free trial of something (e.g. Google Fi) to sign up for Signal, set up the username, and then drop the phone number service. I don't know if there are any problems with this, but I don't think they do anything with your phone number after everything is set up.
Big concern with your number being recycled and a new user receiving the signal activation key on that number.
Sure, and I think that would send a message to all of your contacts that a new account is using that number, but I'm honestly not sure. If you have an active account (i.e. on a desktop or something), I think you can just change your number if that happens (i.e. get another temp number).
It's certainly more convenient if you use a longer-term number, but I think it's feasible with a throwaway number. Once your account is set up, Signal doesn't need your number for anything if you disable publishing that.
It does send a "your safety number has been updated with user" message. But not as an automated message. Only when a new signal thread is started.
Haven't tried when only logged in to desktop and changing devices / numbers so I can't speak to that.