This little-known trick lets you use Signal without giving out your phone number
The Signal Private Messenger app has become the de-facto standard for end-to-end encrypted messaging. Its battle-tested encryption protocol is licensed for use by the likes of Facebook in WhatsApp, and it has been adopted by the XMPP Standards Foundation for use as the basis of OMEMO Multi-End Message and Object Encryption. In short, Signal is great, except for the fact that you need a phone number to use it. Or do you?
One of the most common reasons some people cite for not using Signal is because they don’t want to give out their phone number to the same people they want to send encrypted messages to. In situations where you need both privacy and anonymity, this reluctance makes a lot of sense. But what they may not know is that Signal does not require you to use your phone number at all. [Read more]