There are two legitimate concerns about Signal: they use real phone numbers as identifiers, and you have to trust Signal as the server operator as they don’t allow their client to be used with other servers. While the server software is also open source, you have to trust that they’re running the same version in production.
I agree; however, the second point I don’t see as Signal specific. In any service, how do you verify that a server is running unmodified open source code? For the vast majority of people, they are also depending upon the client being unmodified.
There are two legitimate concerns about Signal: they use real phone numbers as identifiers, and you have to trust Signal as the server operator as they don’t allow their client to be used with other servers. While the server software is also open source, you have to trust that they’re running the same version in production.
I agree; however, the second point I don’t see as Signal specific. In any service, how do you verify that a server is running unmodified open source code? For the vast majority of people, they are also depending upon the client being unmodified.
With e2e encryption, you don’t need to trust the server, you only need to trust the clients.