71
How I Got a Truly Anonymous Signal Account
(theintercept.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
71 points (88.2% liked)
Privacy
31649 readers
341 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
tl;dr the sms verification falls back to voice and they just used a payphone.
I guess if you count the airport full of cameras they went to to do this as "anonymous", then sure :)
Also this article from 2017 suggests not using this method:
That risk is not just theoretical. I made a test account (on another service; not Signal) using a free anonymous SMS number. A few months later, the account had been hijacked.
Of course, if it's a disposable account, then having it hijacked after you're done with it might be a good thing.
Signal has account pins now so I don't think the attack vector is as large as it used to be
They can't "take over" your account, but they can "override" it and delete yours.
How can they override it?
Register a new account over that phone number. They can't get into any previous accounts register with that phone number. They could potentially manage to find the pin if the previous user really used a guessable one, but then again, they won't be able to check the previous messages and the linked owner of that account will be warned of that new connection.
I don't think that's possible with a registration lock unless you are inactive for longer than 7 days.
Just wear a face mask and sunglasses and hoodie when using the pay phone. That way you'll blend-in and be anonymous
”It’s important to maintain control of this phone number."
I strongly feel that this is false.
Care to elaborate?
~~If someone trys to register with an existing number then it wont work if its already being used.~~
Im not sure on this^
Better to enable a security pin if you are concerned.
The traditional phone system involvement is annoying.
Got a source for that? There have already been multiple contradicting sources posted saying this isn't true.
I cant find any information that discusses the security risk. But it would seem that this transfering all content to the owner of the phone number is a standard feature.
So, maybe its not discussed because it doesn't frequently happen.
It doesnt seem like a trustworthy way to ensure users' content remains secure.
Update:
https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/8r7tbc/someone_impersonating_me_using_my_old_number_what/
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007062012-Change-Number
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007062452-What-do-I-do-if-my-phone-is-lost-or-stolen
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Backup-and-Restore-Messages