The software uses a cryptographic hash function to conceal phone numbers within your contact list, and those numbers are truncated for further protection. When you start the program, you must open up your contact list to see who else is using Signal. Best of all, Signal doesn’t have the key to that encryption, so the company can’t look at your messages if someone requested them.Įven better, Signal doesn’t store any information about you – like, at all. Signal uses what’s called end-to-end encryption, meaning that every message is encoded through the app.

In this piece, we will see how Signal works, compare how WhatsApp & Signal differ, and then learn about the business model of Signal because the added context will help us better understand how the incentives of both apps differ. If we want to talk about Signal’s privacy-first approach, the conversation cannot avoid the elephant in the room - WhatsApp. As an open-source project, Signal is an ideal messaging alternative for the privacy-conscious. When it comes to messaging, Signal is one of the best options out there.

In many cases, you can’t have it both ways.įortunately, consumer demand for private interactions online has only increased, which means that there is a growing market for privacy-oriented apps and websites. According to Wikipedia, a collection of 2.7 billion identity records were posted on the web for sale in 2019 alone, of which 774 million were unique email addresses and 21 million were unique passwords.Įven worse, it sometimes feels that you’re stuck in a perpetual catch-22 – either you like the convenience offered by these sites, or you value your privacy. Data breaches and inappropriate data sharing have also become common. These days, technology giants like Google and Facebook track and store data about us to enable advertisers to target us with ads efficiently.

But as our lives become increasingly digital, maintaining personal privacy has become more complicated and deserving of more time and thought than earlier. Before the age of technology, it was relatively easier to lead a life private.

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