Why I am so stubborn about using Signal Messenger

The many benefits of using Signal Messenger

TL;DR

Use Signal because:

• It’s security that’s easy to use and install
• Light Application
• Self-destruct messages
• Truly free! (Donation based)
• All your data, including metadata is not stored by signal servers
• Best end-to-end encryption without compromises.
• Open Source
• Both cryptography experts and privacy advocates recommend Signal
• Voice and video quality is outstanding.

One could argue that idealism and living a highly principled life is unpractical, on the other hand it is easy to descent into cynicism and say “It’s all the same, there is nothing you can do”. I hear this a lot from people these days, they reckon that no matter who you choose as your purveyor of technology and services, Google, Facebook, Huawei, is all the same. I am often shocked how little people seem to care about privacy, the cringeworthy sentence “I have nothing to hide” is said far too often and it is just no true. Everyone has something that they want to remain private for a variety of reasons and I am no different.

But sometimes living according to your principles and as close as you can to an ideal is possible and not very difficult. This for me is the case with Signal and why I have asked all of my friends to install it so we can communicate there. It is very private, very simple and it is truly free.

Here are some reasons why I am adamant about using it:

It is very easy to use

There is nothing complicated about Signal like there used to be in the past with secure forms of communication like PGP. You just download the app to your phone, link it your phone number, and that’s it. Just as easy as any other messaging application

It is light

Signal Messenger doesn’t use a lot of resources, memory, CPU, disk space, or battery. This is unlike other applications like WeChat, that are morbidly overbloated. So even if you only have two friends in Signal, it’s still worth installing.

You can send messages that self-destruct

I don’t like having private conversations in applications like What’s App where I know my messages will perdure for pretty much all eternity on someone else’s phone. In Signal I often put an expiration date of one week or one day with my friends so we can tell each other whatever we want and feel at ease that there are no records anywhere past that time. Of course your friends could copy those and store them somewhere else if they wanted to, but that requires work, and everyone is lazy. :-)

It is truly free and wholeheartedly dedicated to privacy

Signal’s parent organisation, Signal Foundation, is entirely dedicated to privacy and cryptography, that’s their main objective and they run on donations, so you can rest assure that they are not going to sell your data, if they ever did something like that, their whole credibility would go down the drain.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation takes donations to support Signal, which make it an essential tools for reporters to communicate without any fear of being intercepted by an oppressive regime.

This organisation is also supported and funded by Brian Acton, one of What’s App founders who left his own company disenchanted by the way Facebook wanted to run it.

Signal doesn’t store any data away from you

The Signal service does not store your phone number, ip, or any sort of metadata, for example they don’t know when you called and who you called. Other applications that are ostensibly end-to-end encrypted like what’s app do not make these promises.

Signal does ask for access to your contacts when you install it, but this only to find out if any of them also uses Signal, and this check is done from phone to phone, the numbers are not stored server side.

It uses the best possible end-to-end encryption and it is open source

Openwhisper Systems, the organisation that initially founded Signal creates the best end to end encryption for messaging apps and it is, as far as anyone can tell, uncrackable. This encryption is also used by other companies like What’s App, but unlike what’s app, Signal is open source and it is fully committed to your privacy.

Both Cryptography experts and privacy advocates recommend Signal

Whether we are talking about Snowden or Bruce Schneir, they all recommend Signal as their most trusted privacy oriented application.

The voice and video quality is better than others

Given that the network quality is the same, in my experience the voice and video call quality is much better than others like What’s App. The communication is crisp clear and the video tends to be very smooth. I am not entirely sure why this is, but perhaps it has something to do with direct communication that doesn’t go through a server (Although you have the option to enable this if you want to hide your ip from the recipient)

You can stop people and other apps from screenshooting your conversations

This works in most phones, but not all, if you or someone try to take a screenshot of the conversation you will receive a notification about it. Of course this does not prevent you from copying and pasting the content someone else, but it’s not a bad addition.

You can put a password in Signal

If someone else has access to your phone, you can set up an additional password to access Signal messenger. This is something not offered by most messenger apps.

The Desktop App can work independently of the phone

I have to admit that Signal’s desktop app leaves a lot to be desired in terms of syncing messages and just working fast and efficiently — this is probably because this syncing is not server side. It’s not bad, but it isn’t great. It certainly is not as smooth as What’s app webapp. However unlike what’s app you don’t need to have your phone on after you have synced it if you want to use it.

It is worth noting that there may be a good reason why this desktop app is not as smooth’s as What’s App’s web app. Signal does not have a web app for security reasons.

Some Disadvantages of Using Signal

It wouldn’t be fair for me to say it is all perfect with Signal, but the good thing is that the application keeps getting consistently better and the cons mentioned below are by no means a deal breaker for me

Not many people use it

This is the clearest disadvantage of this application. The biggest problem with Signal is of course, that not many people use it, so when you use Signal, you will still most likely have to use something like what’s app for some people

In my case I have managed to move all of my best friends to Signal, and the ones who doggedly refuse to use Signal, I only talk to them in What’s App to meet up. If they refuse to use Signal to have private conversations about personal stuff, then I keep the conversation short and I don’t reveal anything private about myself, call me paranoid, but that’s what I like Signal for.

I may sound stubborn, but for me using What’s App has a cost attached to it, I am essentially selling out my privacy to Facebook, but when I ask someone to use Signal it is truly and completely free and it has the added benefit of being private.

It doesn’t have as many features as others like What’s App or Telegram

This is true, but there is a very good and justifiable reason why Signal doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as its competitors, as explained in this Wired article:

Identifying the features mass audiences want isn’t so hard. But building even simple-sounding enhancements within Signal’s privacy constraints — including a lack of metadata that even WhatsApp doesn’t promise–can require significant feats of security engineering, and in some cases actual new research in cryptography.

Take stickers, one of the simpler recent Signal upgrades. On a less secure platform, that sort of integration is fairly straightforward. For Signal, it required designing a system where every sticker “pack” is encrypted with a “pack key.” That key is itself encrypted and shared from one user to another when someone wants to install new stickers on their phone, so that Signal’s server can never see decrypted stickers or even identify the Signal user who created or sent them.

Signal’s new group messaging, which will allow administrators to add and remove people from groups without a Signal server ever being aware of that group’s members, required going further still. Signal partnered with Microsoft Research to invent a novel form of “anonymous credentials” that let a server gatekeep who belongs in a group, but without ever learning the members’ identities. “It required coming up with some innovations in the world of cryptography,” Marlinspike says. “And in the end, it’s just invisible. It’s just groups, and it works like we expect groups to work.”

There may be some minor issues with some phones

Signal works very well the vast majority of the time, but I heard some people that there are some issues with some phones, such as receiving notifications a little late. In my experience I have seen this mostly happening with phones made by Chinese companies.

It is not very convenient to backup your messages and transfer to other phone

This is not really a problem for me because I don’t like keeping messages for all eternity for the most part. But some people like to be able to store messages in the cloud and transfer to another phone. This can be done with Signal but it is not very straightforward.

Possibly the reason why this is so, it’s because of Signal’s commitment to privacy doesn’t make it a good option to store or transfer messages on the cloud.

Signal is only as secure and private as your phone

I have a fair degree of trust in Google and Apple to keep your data safe and not spying on your individual apps. However with Android you really should do your research on the company that manufactures your phone. I often plead with my friends not to buy phones made by Chinese companies, even though they may seem very cheap and good. The problem with them is that the Chinese government is thoroughly autocratic and does not have Rule of Law, and all Chinese companies are in one way or another very tied to the CCP, meaning I wouldn’t trust my data to be safe with them.

One may argue that similar things are done by the American government, and it can be true. But there are a lot more hurdles for the NSA to just outright get data from companies as the government is more pledged to non-intervention and free markets.

Also, be always wary of whatever application you install in your phone, as much as Google and Apple try to mitigate malware, it is not always possible to be 100% trusting of anything you install in your phone.

Conclusion

If you truly value privacy, use Signal as much as you can and get the most friends you can into it. It is by far the most simple and secure method of encrypted communication these days.