It is 2021 and you should protect your online privacy from entities that use surveillance as their main business model to generate revenue. One of the best ways to protect your online messages is by using Signal Messenger. Why use Signal when there are several other similar secure messaging services available? Here are five (5) major reasons why Signal is best.
End-to-end encrypted (E2EE)
By default, all messages sent and received using Signal are end-to-end encrypted (E2EE), and it is always on — not some feature that you need to turn on or enable. Some messaging services (Telegram) require you to explicitly turn on/enable E2EE before you send a message — it is not on by default, nor is it always on!
Open Source
Not all popular E2EE messaging services are the same, but Signal is the one that has an open source encryption protocol, i.e., anybody can check the code and audit it. Heck, all of the Signal software is open source! Some messaging services, like Telegram, claim to have E2EE, but their encryption protocol is *not* open (they keep it to themselves, so you take their word that it is secure). Viber, which uses the same open source Signal protocol for its E2EE, is not open source — as of my last check, their website does not have a link to their source code repository.
Cross-platform
Signal is available on all major platforms — Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS and Android. You can communicate with practically anybody who has the Signal application, as long as you know their number (BTW, Signal cryptographically hashes the phone numbers and stores it locally on your devices, not on Signal’s servers).
Owned and controlled by a non-profit
Most popular messaging services are owned and controlled by for-profit companies. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are owned by Facebook. Viber is owned by Rakuten. Telegram is owned by a Russian entrepreneur.
Signal is owned by a non-profit foundation, Signal Foundation. The likelihood of being acquired by a for-profit company is almost impossible!
Private, Ad-free, Tracker-free
If you are not paying for the service, expect that the service is being funded through other means — in most cases, via advertisements. Advertisements are placed by telling advertisers who you are for more accurate targeting. Whilst they do not see your encrypted messages (if they have E2EE), they know who you are, who you are communicating with, who your friends are (Viber collects this right after installing the application), your location, when you usually use the service, details about your device, and more. Facebook obviously collects as much personal data as it can and uses it to generate revenue. Similarly, Viber has the same business model, check out the “Information we collect” section of their Privacy Policy.
“(b)Social Media Information: If you sign in to your Viber account through third-party social media sites like VK, you agree to give us on-going access to your personal information on such sites (e.g., your public profile, friend list, accounts you follow or who follow you, your email address, birthday, work history, education history, interests, current city, and video viewing). We may receive certain information about you which is stored on social media sites if users of those sites give us access to their profiles and you are one of their friends or connections, depending upon your settings on those sites.
(c)Activity Information: While using the Viber Services, we will collect, and other users can see, your connection status, whether you have received and seen messages sent to you, if you are currently on another call, and information related to the calls and messages you have sent and received such as length of the call, who called who, who messaged who, and at what time; if you do not want people to know that you’re online or that you’ve seen messages, you can change these options in your settings. As for delivered status and call information (length of the call, missed calls etc.), we believe they are important for other Viber users and therefore cannot be canceled.”
and
“(d) Information from Other Sources: The information we collect may be combined with information from outside records (e.g. demographic information and additional contact information) that we have received in accordance with the law.
(e) Device and Location Information: We collect additional information when you access our App through a certain device (e.g. your mobile device’s unique identifier; your session’s ip address; information about your device’s operating system, your browser, browser or operating system language; your wireless network, and your mobile carrier; the Viber call log). We may also collect your WPS location data — you can choose whether to allow this by changing your geolocation tracking settings.”
Viber even has this “CCPA Do not sell my personal information” request page, but only for residents of the state of California, USA. So what does it do with the personal information of non-California residents?
There are other open source messaging services that have full end-to-end encryption, but Signal, so far, is the popular one, and the easiest to use. You can even use Signal Messenger as your default messaging application on your Android device, though SMS are sent without E2EE, obviously. Besides, with Edward Snowden, Bruce Schneier, Laura Poitras, Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk, among others, as users, what are you waiting for? Ditch those other messaging applications already, and use Signal.