5 Reasons Why You May Consider Using Signal Private Messenger

Signal private Messenger is considered one of the most secure messaging apps ever conceived. The brainchild of privacy legend Moxie Marlinspike, Signal replaces your default SMS messenger app, making it almost seamless to use. Signal user adoption went to its maximum height in 2021 when WhatsApp updated its privacy agreement in a controversial fashion.

What is Signal?

Signal is a secure messenger app that replaces your Android phone or iPhone’s regular SMS app. Messages to and from other Signal users are sent over the internet and protected by very strong end-to-end encryption. Signal also supports VoIP and video calls between the users, it is available for android, iPhone and desktop devices.
Earlier this week, a Trump administration officials shared a sensitive data in a signal group by adding a journalist to a group discussing US plans to attack Houthis in Yemen. Though sharing sensitive information is prohibit by governments for commercial Messaging apps. Signal is widely popular among groups such as journalists.

Here is five reasons why you may consider using signal

1- Signal is an open source application

Open source software is a software whose source code has been made publicly available by its copyright holder. This means that it can be independently audited for errors and to ensure that it isn’t doing something it shouldn’t. Signal was fully independently audited in 2016 and was found to be cryptographically secure. If the application is closed source, it will be hard to know what the application’s code is really doing, and so we cannot relay upon closed source applications on the security of our communications.

2- Signal employs end-to-end encryption

With Signal, all messages and traffic is encrypted prior to be sent, and can only be decrypted by the intended recipient(s). This emanates the need for any third party to be trusted on the security of your data. The only way for an adversary to access messages sent by Signal is if it has direct physical access to your or the recipient’s phone. Even then, Signal includes the option to encrypt all stored messages, which make it impossible to access them unless the phone owner can somehow be coerced into revealing their passcode. However , it is worth mentioning that sending a message to a non-Signal users is using the regular SMS and then, it is not secure.

3- Signal private messenger is secure

Signal messages are securely encrypted with Signal Protocol, which is arguably the most secure text messaging protocol ever developed. It amalgamates the Extended Triple Diffie-Hellman (X3DH) key agreement protocol, Double Ratchet algorithm, pre-keys, and uses Curve25519, AES-256, and HMAC-SHA256 as cryptographic primitives.

4- Signal private messenger is NOT like WhatsApp

One may say “these features of Signal are very similar to those of WhatsApp”. the answer is YES, this list of features sounds a lot like WhatsApp. It’s true, the Facebook-owned messaging app has over a billion users, offers most of the same features, and even employs Signal’s encryption to keep chats private. But WhatsApp raises a few concerns that Signal doesn’t. First, it’s owned by Facebook, a company whose primary interest is in collecting information about you to sell you ads. That alone may steer away those who feel Facebook already knows too much about us. Even though the content of your WhatsApp messages are encrypted, Facebook can still extract metadata from your habits, like who you’re talking to and how frequently. And lately, the new privacy policy update by WhatsApp made users worldwide consider switching to Signal as the App reporting a surge in the signup request.

5- Signal private messenger is praised by Edoward Snowden and recently recommended by Elon Musk

For years, the ex-NSA (National Security Agency) whistleblower Edward Snowden has been raising awareness about so-called secure messaging applications or programs and publically criticised apps like Skype, Google Allo, and Telegram. In fact, NSA documents leaked by him showed how Microsoft handed over plain text Skype chats of users to the agency. But today, citing the tense situation in Iran, the whistleblower has posted a series of tweets explaining why Telegram Messenger app is unsafe and it can be secured with little effort.  Snowden is a big fan of encrypted messaging app Signal and advises his followers to use Signal. In fact, in one of his tweets, he mentioned using Signal app every day. 

Tesla and Spacex CEO Elon Musk who has been a Facebook products critic in recent years, has tweeted to his 41.5 Million followers to use signal.

Conclusion

Signal has revolutionized private chat by introducing highly secure open source end-to-end encrypted messaging that is as easy and seamless to use as sending regular SMS text messages. Quite simply, if you want secure private conversations, then there is no real competition to Signal.