The process to verify a Signal contact involves sharing your per-conversation "Safety Number" with the other party via a different channel (like a phone conversation or a tweet).
To verify that you are indeed communicating with Gene Wood using Signal Private Messenger, you can verify my identity with the following steps.
- Open a Signal conversation with me and send me a message
- Click the vertical ellipsis "⋮" icon in the upper right
- Select "Conversation settings"
- Select "View safety number"
- Look at the 12 sets of 5 digits. You'll see my number either as the first 6 sets or the second 6 sets.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
My Signal Private Messenger identity is
59565 75455 87007 41925 93312 55368
This will show up in the "Verify safety number" page along with your identity
as either the first six or second six sets of 5 digits.
For example, if your identity was
00000 00000 00000 00000 00000 00000
you would see either
00000 00000 00000 00000
00000 00000 59565 75455
87007 41925 93312 55368
or
59565 75455 87007 41925
93312 55368 00000 00000
00000 00000 00000 00000
displayed.
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Version: GnuPG v1
iF4EAREKAAYFAlqXhzkACgkQ8Knn3NOeRS4bvAD/U3HjbuiUuqtE/JEezv31tOT2
0cdYPF66ALmgNTZ+hSMA/R1pHhblKpO7Sts8jLMvMIPGyCaW5yHO4uBP6mZa3Z41
=lWOT
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
My old signal identity, before changing phones in February 2018 was 85724 85359 35413 45971 62806 99584
In 2016 Signal Private Messenger changed how users confirm the identities of each other to the method described above.