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That's how it know what contacts are using it and auto add to what's app if you it add a number that's using it.

It's just convenience. People don't want add users names they just want it to work.

I believe signal are/were working on a way to work out this information without actually sending to the server

The problem is that they don't even give you the option to add the names yourself. You can use it, very crippled, without giving them your entire contact list, but it's almost unusable.

And in fact, they already have usernames (they show them in the Group chats), they simply refuse to show them.

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