The need to share a phone number to connect on Signal has often been at odds with the purpose of the privacy-focused messaging app.
With the desire to better protect subscribers, the company explained that soon it will be possible to use a username instead of the numeric identifier to chat.
This will eliminate the need to share your number when connecting to another person.
The username, different from the one set when creating the account, can be changed as many times as you want, or deleted completely, to return the mobile number to the contacts.
An official post from Signal explains that "if you don't want to provide your phone number to chat with someone, you can create a unique username to use instead. This username is not the profile name displayed in chats, it is not permanent and is not visible to people you are chatting with in Signal. It is simply a way to start a conversation without sharing your phone number. You will still need a phone number to sign up on Signal although it will be hidden by default, a unless the contact has already saved it on their phone."
This move will also increase the level of privacy when searching for new users.
If until now it was enough to paste a number into the search box to understand if a certain person was registered with the service, if the identifier is hidden, the only way to find users will be to know their name used in the app.
The changes are currently in beta and are expected to roll out in the coming weeks.
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