WhatsApp is the most popular communications application on the planet, with over two billion users using it for messaging.\u00a0Bought by Facebook in 2014, the service popularized the use of end-to-end encryption in everyday communications, introducing it as the default for messaging in 2016.<\/p>\n
To do this, it has partnered with Moxy Marlinspike’s Open Whisper Systems to integrate the encrypted messaging protocol.\u00a0Microsoft and Google have also used the protocol, which is widely regarded as the gold standard in encrypted communications.<\/p>\n
Now, Open Whisper Systems exists as Signal Messenger, LLC and is part of the Signal Foundation.\u00a0This rebranding made the foundation put more effort into its own application.\u00a0The Signal Foundation’s flagship Signal application provides fully secure and easy-to-use communications.\u00a0It has direct and group messaging, as well as one-to-one audio and video chat.<\/p>\n
That’s why you should use Signal for any conversation where privacy matters.<\/p>\n
The new security features come first on\u00a0Signal\u00a0.\u00a0For example, Signal has messages that disappear – which are automatically deleted after a certain period of time – from 2016.<\/p>\n
Other features that WhatsApp users did not have include viewed messages, encrypted profiles, an incognito keyboard switch for Android and backups.<\/p>\n
Signal also has a slightly wider range of clients and is dedicated to Linux desktop users.<\/p>\n
All Signal source code\u00a0is published<\/a>\u00a0for anyone to review and use under a GPLv3 client license and an AGPLv3 server license.<\/p>\n This means that you can see what is happening inside it or, more useful, you rely on the specialized expertise of the people who examine the code and know exactly what they are looking for.<\/p>\n Being a larger platform,\u00a0WhatsApp\u00a0is more prone to malicious actors and could take longer until dangerous vulnerabilities are detected.\u00a0Any application can and will eventually suffer from vulnerabilities – Signal has solved some of them.<\/p>\n Check out our Tech News section<\/a><\/p>\n But the closed source code of WhatsApp means that there are a lot of potential targets that remain unknown until they are exploited.<\/p>\n Another advantage of open source software is that you can play with it.\u00a0It is designed as a mass communication platform, but it is quite difficult to build.<\/p>\n But if you think about it technically, you can learn a lot about how a system works by building a test instance.\u00a0Guides are available to help users get a Signal server up and running.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most compelling reason to use Signal is that Facebook has a problem\u00a0respecting the privacy of\u00a0its\u00a0users\u00a0.\u00a0Facebook has a terrible history when it comes to collecting and manipulating data, from the Cambridge Analytica business to its practice of sharing user data with phone manufacturers.<\/p>\n It has already been proven that Facebook cannot trust the\u00a0data of WhatsApp users\u00a0who, according to EU law, should have remained private.\u00a0In 2017, European regulators took action against Facebook for sharing the phone numbers of WhatsApp users with its social network Facebook, for advertising purposes.\u00a0Facebook has strongly violated data protection regulations.<\/p>\n Moreover, there is the desire of Facebook to insert ads and commercial messages in WhatsApp and potentially compromise its security.\u00a0It is unclear yet what will eventually happen to the WhatsApp messaging service when Facebook combines WhatsApp with Instagram and Messenger messaging, but it goes without saying that it poses a real danger to the privacy of your personal data.<\/p>\n [ratemypost]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WhatsApp is the most popular communications application on the planet, with over two billion users using it for messaging.\u00a0Bought by Facebook in 2014, the service popularized the use of end-to-end encryption in everyday communications, introducing it as the default for messaging in 2016. To do this, it has partnered with Moxy Marlinspike’s Open Whisper Systems […] More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10404,"featured_media":116803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[805],"tags":[784],"class_list":{"0":"post-116802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-guide"},"acf":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stereoindex.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stereoindex.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stereoindex.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stereoindex.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10404"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stereoindex.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stereoindex.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stereoindex.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stereoindex.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stereoindex.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stereoindex.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Signal has less potential for hidden vulnerabilities than WhatsApp<\/strong><\/h3>\n
You can run your own Signal server<\/strong><\/h3>\n
How much can you trust Facebook, the company that owns WhatsApp?<\/strong><\/h3>\n