It can use usernames now. I don't have any of my Signal contacts in my contact list, and I can't see their phone numbers any more since they introduced the usernames. Not sure if by digging in the database files I could extract the numbers or not.
Ok, now where are Signal's servers hosted? You're not safe for any secret police from those countries and countries friendly to the hosting countries.
> It's never used after that (unless you want to use it).
As in there's no way to accidentally leak your phone number to your contacts on, say, a new installation that comes with the option to make it visible by default?
Edit: You are making one uninformed assertion after another. Stop making endless errors and just look up these things at signal.org. They are very open about it.
> Ok, now where are Signal's servers hosted? You're not safe for any secret police from those countries and countries friendly to the hosting countries.
Signal is very open about what information they collect, which is all they can produce: a phone number, and "the date and time a user registered with Signal and the last date of a user’s connectivity to the Signal service".
> As in there's no way to accidentally leak your phone number to your contacts on, say, a new installation that comes with the option to make it visible by default?
Is there? What are you claiming, and based on what? There are infinite speculative security risks.
Let's not forget that Signal uses real life phone numbers as identifiers, making the secret police's job even easier.