Introducing Signal | An open source messaging platform that protects users privacy

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Introduction

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For the past few years, it has been obvious that having a smartphone is practically a necessity for people who wish to have an active social life. The comfort provided by these mobile devices and the ease to communicate instantly with our friends is extremely valuable. Which is why it is no surprise to see the overwhelming majority of people always having one of these devices in their hands.

However, even though there is a need to use digital messaging platforms to keep in touch, there is also a risk in terms of the people's privacy who share private information over the Internet.

The truth is that many companies offering free digital services such as Google and Facebook earn their revenues thanks to online advertising, and the better they know the likes of their users gives the more efficient their ads campaign can be. The result of this is a kind of conflict between digital service providers who want access to more data to improve the effectiveness of their ads and people who do not want to allow these companies access to their private information.

Given this situation, there are other projects that seek to offer the same digital services but respecting the privacy of its users in order to gain their trust and obtain a good position in the market. Due to the extreme popularity that digital messaging applications have, I decided to investigate if there was an alternative that not only protected the user's privacy but also used open source code. And indeed, this alternative exists and it is called Signal.

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What is Signal?

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This is an application available for iOS, Android and desktop computers, which basically allows users to communicate instantly with each other in a 100% private and secure way since the data transmission is completely encrypted.

Users are allowed to share all types of content, such as text messages, photos, audios, videos and documents with the assurance that nothing they say is being stored by Signal.

Given the fact it works through the internet, using this application does not imply additional charges of any kind beyond the normal cost of internet that is incurred by the user. This means that when making calls and video calls these have no special charge and of course, the registration of such calls will always remain encrypted so that no one can ever have undue access to previous communications carried out using the Signal app.

Additionally, Signal has some rather peculiar options where the user is allowed to set a period of time after which previously selected messages are automatically deleted. This further increases the security that Signal provides to its users and helps in protecting their private information.

In the following images, we can see the interface of this application for iOS and right after each image I will share a brief explanation of what we are seeing on the screen.

Exploring Signal iOS app

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In my case, I installed the application in an iOS device, when opening the app it will ask us to confirm our cell phone number by receiving an SMS with a code and then writing the code in the app. Then, we find the following information about allowing the use of notifications when we receive a message.

Once we are inside the application, this is how the interface looks the first time we start using it. As we can see, it's a very clean and intuitive interface.

In the following image, we can see that this application besides working in portrait mode also works in landscape mode. The interface that we see below is when we press the option to send a message.

Such as other similar applications, Signal allows the creation of chat groups to be able to communicate in a more dynamic way with our different social groups.

When going to Settings, these are the options that we have available. For obvious reasons, I had to delete the phone number from the pic.

Note that in the upper right corner there is a small moon icon, and when we press it we find...

Night mode! Something super important for users like me who tend to use our devices and applications until late at night. And in my opinion, the black interface looks aesthetically better.

By clicking on the option to invite our friends to join Signal, we have the choice to do so by sending a SMS or by email. These options are quite reasonable because most people are able to receive messages using those 2 methods.

This application naturally allows the user to have a great degree of control over their privacy, to the point of even blocking the indicator that informs the other person if one is writing a message.

Signal is perfectly integrated with Apple technologies that were created to protect these devices from intruders such as Touch ID and Face ID. It is quite clear that Signal developers have as their main objective to allow the user to be in total control over their privacy.

People who use this app to make calls can literally hide those calls using the Signal servers as a proxy. It is difficult to imagine what kind of person would be interested in such a high level of privacy, but for anyone who needs it, Signal has proven that it is one of the best applications if one wants to remain anonymous.

In the following image, we can see the last available settings related to the privacy of the user.

When exploring the "advanced" options, the only one I could interact with was the one related to the debug log, which allows the user to go directly to GitHub to report any inconvenience. The second option only allows you to press it once and then it says that notifications are activated, and the last option in my case did not allow any interaction in any way.

Regarding notifications, we have the following basic and very common options so that any user can customize the way in which they are notified when new messages arrive.

Signal has many different sounds that can be chosen to customize notifications according to the user's tastes. Here we can see a sample of the available options:

Finally, when clicking on "About" we will find the version of the application that we have installed, along with the options to read the privacy policy and to request technical assistance in case there are problems with the way the application is behaving.

Signal vs Whatsapp

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The leading digital messaging application is undoubtedly WhatsApp. In its early days, it competed with the BB Messenger app but thanks to the great disruption from the iPhone and Android phones, Blackberry eventually lost relevance and the same can be said about its messaging platform while at the same time, WhatsApp was establishing itself as the new de facto messaging platform, mainly because it has always been compatible with both iOS and Android.

However, in February 2014 the giant Facebook decided to buy WhatsApp, and as has been reported more than once, Facebook is a company that tends to not protect the privacy of its users very well. This can put the privacy of people using WhatsApp at risk because Facebook effectively controls the code this application uses.

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Therefore, the great difference between Signal and WhatsApp is that the former is committed to protecting the privacy of its users, while the latter is under the control of an entity that has monetary incentives to violate the privacy of its users. Because of this, anyone who cares about the security of their conversations would have good reasons to use Signal instead of Whatsapp.

However, it is clear that WhatsApp is much more popular and most people use the applications where they have more friends, so it is understandable that WhatsApp receives more attention and is the app with the largest number of users.

Recent updates

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7 days ago an update was released with the following improvement:

Use the updated camera and gallery selection process to make dynamic albums that mix the old with the newly captured. ^Source

Conclusion

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In this article, I was able to explain the positive features that Signal is offering to its people, and how they are a great option when it comes to protecting the people’s online privacy.

Links

• Repository: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS

• Download link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/signal-private-messenger/id874139669