This occurs because
some platforms sell real phone numbers that haven't been registered
on Telegram(or other platforms require phone number or email to register), as well as email addresses.
We should be cautious about sharing our phone number or email address online. Once it's out there, it can be challenging to erase, cuz they are all saved in a cloud server, and keeping everything in one place is easy for hacker to attack(don't ask me y).
Now, Twitter/X requires users to verify their ID
From my perspective, the digital realm should remain separate from our offline lives.
Internet exists because it offers us capabilities that are restricted in the physical world.
People should really start to migrate.
I only use Twitter for daily news check, for other communication or disscussion needs.
What are you guys using for these services?
I use WireMin, cuz it is decentralized, which means no central cloud server to keep our data, and not require personal info to create an ID.
Associating phone numbers with IM identities is awfully stupid. The good old "register with just login\password, confirm with any email" was fine, and I remember people complaining about sites which required email confirmation, it felt disrespectful and spam-inducing.
Now, mobile phone numbers - that's literally the way to inform everybody offended by your opinions or just interested about your everything, at least of the "necessary for a successful murder" kind.
Another string of numbers that us not secure and can be randomly generated to match up with a real value and used to impersonate someone while companies and the gevernment blame the person for not keeping it secure but also requiring it for doing pretty much anything.
True, registering with just a username and password was much more privacy-focused, cuz at least we don't need to hand out our personal info.
While tech companies claim they use phone number/email verification for enhanced security, the reality is that they often expose our personal information to advertisers and provide hackers with more valuable data. This is especially concerning when everything is stored on a central cloud server.
Thank got, we have decentralized IMs available rn. While using the old way to register and having top-tier security because of the decentralized nature, messages are sent peer-to-peer n end-to-end, ensuring that data like chat histories and passwords are stored only on our devices.
There has already been a mass migration from Twitter to Mastodon. Since Mastodon is federated, you can choose any instance you want, which is pretty free and open. I've already met many great people on Mastodon. To be honest Mastodon is gradually replacing Twitter's role in my life.
And WireMin happens to be one of the encrypted software I've been following. What makes WireMin special is its P2P file sharing, private and public group chats thing. It's been pretty neat so far, but we have to admit that the userbase of such encrypted messaging apps is still very small.
I am also a WireMin user. I like that they don't require personal information to create an account. It's old-fashioned in a good way – they only ask for a username and a password during registration, they propvide me a unique prive key as my WireMin ID.