Signal Profiles and Message Requests let people know who's messaging them.
Read more:
- Signal Profiles
- Message Requests
Your encrypted Signal Profile is a name and picture that you set up within the app. It is showed alongside your phone number. If you lose or switch devices, your existing profile can be recovered using your PIN.
Is a Signal Profile required?
Mandatory (encrypted) names let people know who's messaging them.
- First names are required. Feel free to choose a nickname, a single character, or an emoji.
- Photos and last names are optional.
- Keep in mind, this is what people will see when you message them if they don't have you saved to their contacts.
How is my Signal Profile displayed?
It will be shown alongside your existing phone number. Conversations will feel more personal. Group threads will be less confusing.
Who can see my Signal Profile?
It is automatically shared with
- any contacts you have saved in your address book,
- any people or groups in conversations you create,
- any people or groups you explicitly accept,
- and any groups you are added to by someone that you had previously shared your profile with.
Is sharing my Signal Profile required?
Yes, sharing your profile is required to continue chats.
Can Signal's servers see my Signal Profile?
The Signal service does not have any knowledge of the name you have chosen or the image you have set. Your profile information is end-to-end encrypted with a unique profile key that is securely shared via the same Signal Protocol messaging channel that already protects your conversations and calls.
Message Requests give you the option to block, delete, or accept messages from somebody who is trying to get in touch with you.
- For individual conversations, you get to see the name (and photo) of the person who's trying to message or call you.
- For group conversations, you have better control whether you join a group or not and the group members will be less confusing with profiles instead of a bunch of phone numbers.
- For individual conversations, Signal lists if you have any other shared groups on your device with this contact. This is detected on device.
- This is to help decide if you want to continue a conversation.
- You can always block them from the chat and then delete them from your contact list.
| Look at the alert below their profile name to see if there are common groups. |
What happens when I ...
| Block |
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| Delete |
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| Accept |
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