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Signal Will Let You Sign Up Without a Phone Number — For $3 (itsfoss.com)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 2 days ago (5 children)

But why not also accept crypto, like Bitcoin? That way actual privacy conscious people can just convert monero to bitcoin for a trustworthy decentralized private payment

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    The way I see it, that's next. This feature is in beta, and I imagine they wanted to rollout the payment method that would be most used, or maybe easiest to implement first for testing. They have already officially said more payment methods will come, but they have not said what those payment methods will be. Given they already have their own crypto, that will almost definitely be one of the options

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    "That's next" given that it took them years to make phone # optional, I'm not optimistic that this will happen anytime soon. Not to mention their current payment method requires play services, which has probably already de-anonymized the user

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    It tooks years to implement the whole functionality. They also weren't working on this feature the whole time, but it was on the list. Adding another payment method isn't the same.

    Not to mention their current payment method requires play services, which has probably already de-anonymized the user

    I agree it's not great to require play services, but it isn't going to always be the only option. It's in beta, so clearly isn't finished.

    The users are not de-anonymized, they use a ZKP transaction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof). We don't need to have to trust Google, it's the whole point of a zero trust model. Zero trust is required

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    When I talk about de-anonymizing the user, I mean that Google Play has already identified the user of the device. Then they can spy on the Signal app to try to identify the Signal account.

    But also, regarding ZKP, afaik their ZKP doesn't account for timing attacks. Signal can log when each account was made, and collude with Google to figure out which payments correspond to which accounts

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