Signal has started rolling out Signal Login, an optional registration method that allows users to create a Signal account without providing a phone number. The feature will be rolled out first on Android and will come to iOS later.
As we previously reported, Signal Login is not a free alternative registration method. Signal requires users who choose to register without a phone number to make a one-time payment. The price at launch is $2.99 / € 3.49, although this may vary by region and currency.
Yes, just like it isn’t the Signal Foundation that collects the connection metadata, but AWS on which Signal runs and Signal is collecting just enough metadata that it is possible to correlate the metadata AWS has with the account details that Signal has. Or Google and the notification metadata and device hardware identifies, etc. Or the metadata that Cloudflare collects when Signal uses them as a CDN…