I don’t feel like this adequately accounts for stupid people though. The number of times I’ve seen people freak out over a perfectly legit website because a cert warning popped up or others who have ignored the warning and clicked through to a scam or malware… 🤦‍♀️

You do realise that most medical research these days is for-profit? The only thing opening these databases to medical research will do is increase the profit lining the pockets of the already mega wealthy (and corrupt) industrial medical complex.

If you want to get really technical, each Signal account actually has a ‘secret’ account number that the phone number is linked to. The phone number requirement is actually a means to reduce spam and scam accounts.