[godelski]

A spam account is a fake account that sends spam. Like Bitcoin bullshit. Platforms like signal, Whatsapp, telegram, and others have an issue since you can just message literally every possible number. One way signal handles this is by not identifying that you even have an account unless you accept the message. There's also rate limiting and other stuff going on. But I'm pretty sure you know that a spam account is. If you really don't I'd love to learn how you use the Internet because I'd love to learn how to avoid these accounts. Twitter and Gmail loves to connect me with spam accounts.

[drexlspivey]

How does signal know that account X is sending Bitcoin bullshit if the messages are encrypted? Also I see you have a Keybase account, Keybase doesn't use phone numbers, how do they solve "spam accounts" ?

[godelski]

> How does signal know that account X is sending Bitcoin bullshit if the messages are encrypted?

They don't. That's not what I intended to say, sorry for the miscommunication. It's just a common spam bot I see on things like Facebook, Insta, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, email, etc. But Signal can stop you from sending 100 messages a second. There are other ways to fight spam without needing to know any of the users or contents of the messages. A lot can be done from the minimal metadata that's required to perform communications.

> Keybase doesn't use phone numbers, how do they solve "spam accounts" ?

I don't know but I'm not a security expert. So you probably shouldn't be asking me. But if you got any questions about ML I'm qualified to answer some of those.

I'm pretty sure a big reason Signal uses phone numbers is just because they built from Text Secure. It is also aimed at an audience less technical than Keybase's target audience. I mean Keybase is free and private but everyone still uses Slack or Discord. FWIW, Signal does write blogs about these things. So if you'd like to learn more I suggest reading those while you wait for someone much more qualified to answer your question. I think you'll get it answered much faster if you're less assertive. Or you could go the otherway and try the old tactic of confidently saying something outlandish and wait for people to correct you. But I think this is a more difficult method to get answers to a specific question. Your call though.