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I remember a time when visiting a website that opens a javacript dialog box asking for your name so the message "hi " could be displayed was baulked at.

Why does signal want a phone number to register? Is there a better alternative?

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[-] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 5 months ago

Signal is a messenger service. You can expire messages after a certain amount of time.

They ask for a phone number to limit bots. I used my Google voice number and it worked fine. I like Telegram which banned me after a day of use for using Google Voice.

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

I get that Signal is a messaging system (not sure if "messenger service" has a specific meaning). What I don't understand is why I'd want to use it instead of any of the million others that are out there. I've never used Signal and don't have the slightest clue about how it operates, but apparently it tries to mess with the contact list on your phone? That sounds bad. I use Nextcloud Chat sometimes and its web design is ugly, but it works ok and you can self-host it fairly easily. It doesn't do anything with your phone contacts. Jami is distributed but (maybe unrelated) I often have trouble getting it to work at all.

this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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