Phone number privacy and usernames are now rolling out to everyone using Signal version 7.0! Update your app to take advantage of these new features 🎇
https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames/
That was exactly my first thought. Might be something for various underground groups, but the normal use case seems to be just regular communication among friends & family.
Telegram is only slightly more private than Facebook Messenger. Not only can they link a username to a phone number, but they can link a phone number to a username too.
Meanwhile, Signal did it right.
And that's before we start talking about all the problems made in Telegram, from rolling their own encryption to telling their users not to use it.
Is there a purpose for such chats? Even if they are non-public as long as they have more than 1 people someone will leak your messages if they wanted. Same as in public chats.
Telegram doesn’t have this to such an extent. If someone has your number in their contacts and you join Telegram they see you whether you want it or not. Signal (now) hides that too.
Signal sill implemented better than any other. They can’t link your username to phone number, the others can. So maybe other are faster on a superficial level, but the implementation is trash.