A lot of work at Wire has gone into solving the problem of how to more easily find and connect with friends.
The latest updates on Android and iOS (both released last week) introduced signing up using a phone number. The result is fewer steps when signing up for Wire and being automatically connected to your address book contacts who are already Wire users.
The benefit is simple — more people to talk to, and it’s easier for your friends to find you as well.
What about signing up with an email address?
Many people have said that they liked being able to sign up with an email. Some prefer not to share their phone number. Others know that they’ll be changing their number when moving to a new country.
All this means is that we’ll continue to support registration with email on Wire for Web and iPad and Android tablets.
No change for existing accounts
Existing accounts continue to work as usual — simply log in with your email address instead of your phone number.
We do however recommend that you add your phone number to the account. This makes it easier for your friends to find and connect to you.
Wire cares about privacy
Wire has very straightforward rules for privacy, especially when it comes to personal data like phone number, email address, and address book data that you share with us.
We use this information to suggest connection between people in the search results and to connect people with each other.
We keep your address book data safe by converting phone numbers and email addresses it contains into irreversible hashed values. We do not collect the names in your address book, or any other information that could identify the contact, such as notes and birthdays.
We don’t sell or rent your personal data or contents of your address book with anyone.
We don’t contact phone numbers or email addresses that you share with us, not to invite these people to join Wire nor to contact them for any reason.
Read our Privacy Policy for more details on how we treat collected data.
