On January 7th 2021, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk made a tweet “Use Signal” ever since that it became a slogan for those who fear about their privacy. This tweet comes after WhatsApp announced it’s revised privacy policy stating that they would be sharing our very own data from WhatsApp to Facebook. This is where Signal app makes into picture, this app have a better privacy policy than WhatsApp. Funny fact is WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption as that of Signal. And also the co-founder of WhatsApp “Brian Acton” is the one made the initial fund to signal.
WhatsApp have been the source of messaging across the world for about a decade now. India alone have 340 million users (source: eMarketer). This app have been effective for both personal texting and business transactions, what’s been important in these stuffs is the trust in privacy, sadly it’s at risk now.
Before looking into the risk, we must know something about encryption. Encryption is more are like a lock to your data. There are two types of encryption, client-to-client encryption and server-to-client encryption. Imagine that your texting to your friend through any internet based messenger, on client-to-client encryption, the message or text which you send will be encrypted (locked) right when you send it, then it reaches server finally reaches receiver where it gets unlocked, so risk of hacking to your data is minimum whereas in server-to-client encryption your text or message will be encrypted only after reaching the server and then gets unlocked after reaching your friend. When the message reaches from you to server there is possibility of getting hacked. This is the case even for VideoCall, Voice call and also to shared location. So the point is when our data is been sent from WhatsApp to Facebook, anything can happen to our data in that interval.
Signal app was found in the 2018 by Moxie Marlinspike, but it really made its sound after the privacy issue with the WhatsApp came up. What’s so special about Signal? Signal is a cross-platfrom encrypted messaging service, so the privacy is at max. It is used for one-one or group messages, even images and videos can be shared. Video call and voice call is also available with privacy. But doesn’t have status features like WhatsApp. In Signal everything is encrypted even the GIFs we use, which is not the same in WhatsApp. All these features makes it ideal for using a messenger without the fear of getting watched.
Elon Musk is not the first to make such endorse, privacy advocate Edward Snowden and also twitter CEO Jack Dorsey gave same suggestion. It’s upto us now to have our privacy or to export our data.
