Signal begins testing usernames, letting users set the phone number linked to their account as private and not share the number on their profile
Offering usernames will allow people to stop giving out their phone number —a sensitive piece of information— in order to connect with others on the messaging app.
Context & Ripple Effects
Signal’s test extends its earlier account-management work: users had already gained the ability to change the number tied to an account without losing messages, profile data, or groups. Usernames shift the focus from preserving an account through a number change to reducing when that number must be exposed to another person.
The move sits alongside similar identity experiments in messaging, including WhatsApp’s reported Android username work and Telegram’s option for an anonymous number at sign-up. Signal later rolled usernames out in beta, making this test an important step in that transition.
First-order effects
- Signal users in the test can establish a username and keep the phone number associated with their account private rather than displaying it on their profile.
- People connecting on Signal can use a username instead of receiving a contact’s phone number, while registration remains separate from profile-level number sharing.
Second-order effects
- Username-based discovery puts pressure on other phone-number-centric messaging services to offer a comparable way to initiate chats without disclosing a persistent contact identifier.
- Signal must make usernames easy to find and verify without weakening the safety and identity-verification tools it has previously added, such as safety numbers and QR-code verification.
Third-order effects
- If adopted broadly, messaging identity can become less dependent on the phone number as the public-facing address, separating account registration from how people are discovered and contacted.
- That shift could make privacy controls around discoverability—rather than encryption alone—a more central point of competition among messaging platforms.
The trend: Private messaging services are moving toward username-based contact layers that limit routine exposure of users’ phone numbers.