SimpleX chat is probably better for privacy, but my dad will never understand how to use it.

Of course they do. That's what requiring phone numbers does. There is no other reason to continue this requirement except removing anonymity. It's to respond to pen orders.

Someone dug out a 2 year old article.

Wasn't Signal only able to disclose first and last timestamps when a user has connected to their servers when receiving legal requests? I just assumed their protocol made it so that they can't do it, or they theoretically can but don't store such logs.

Thankfully i don't have this problem, almost all of my contacts use only proprietary messengers instead of this shady Signal.

I don't really get it,

Sticking with the snail mail analogy, what happens when two pen pals keep sending mail to each other from their homes without including return addresses in their envelopes? The postal service might not know who exactly is sending each piece of mail but, over time, they would know that Address A in Lower Manhattan, New York, keeps on getting one-way mail from the post office in 3630 East Tremont Avenue, the Bronx, New York; and Address B in the Bronx keeps on getting one-way mail from the post office in 350 Canal Street, Lower Manhattan.

I mean, no, all they know is that they ALL users get one way mail all the time?

The "over time" in "but, over time, they would know that..." does a lot of heavy lifting. Would they? How would they know that?

Sure, if there were only two participants in the system, I would agree. But we have way more than 2 users on signal.

Does Delta Chat / Arcane Chat suffer from the same vulnerability?

https://arcanechat.me https://delta.chat/en/

Kinda of a poor write up. I have my issues with this but signal doesn't really use phone numbers internally, it uses hashes of phone numbers. It's not as straight forward as this article makes it seem, and this is readily available information that the author could have found.

My vague memory is that Signal doesn't keep that information, so it couldn't be subpeona'd, indeed they've been asked for it before and declined to share.

BUT IT'S MOOT IF YOUR MESSAGES ARE VIEWED by sender or receiver ON ANDROID, WINDOWS OR IOS. Those operating systems can just view everything you type regardless.

I would hope so. It's facilitating us talking; it kinda has to know who I am trying to talk to.

In addition to that, in most European countries you have to register with your ID in oder to get a mobile phone number. So its provably end-to-end related to your identity.

I prefer apps that require no phone number. Like Threema, SimpleX, Session, Status, XMPP, or Tox.

Should've known this was going to be an ad for SimpleX. They have a hard-on for anti-Signal content. It's nearly as laughable as GrapheneOS's hate for anything not GrapheneOS.