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#Signal has a beta that makes it possible to chat without sharing your phone number with the others. This is an important development for privacy in use cases like journalists and activists that have to privately interact with people they do not know. Careful about using a public username for Signal, it could open you up to spam and targeted attacks like Pegasus.
@dymaxion definitely, but journalists and activists often want a public contact methods. So they should consider that publicly posting their Signal username could be as dangerous as posting their cell phone number.
@guardianproject
I do not believe that there is a threat model wherein I would consider it as dangerous. Dangerous, possibly, but in no way equivalent.
@guardianproject
I cannot imagine an organization randomly using malware as expensive as pegasus on random public usernames. Most organizations in a position to deploy can also trivially find cell numbers.
Some random crap drive-by attacks? Yeah, sure, same as any other way you're online, but signal is a relatively hard target. Spending hundreds of thousands on a payload? No.