We have lots of messaging options in addition to SMS and MMS. There are Skype, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Twitter (with and without direct messages), WeChat, WhatsApp, SnapChat, and more. Many of them are encrypted, and many people presume that their communications on these apps are private and secure. But are they really? Cloud-hosted applications that are harvesting metadata from your conversations, then using it to sell you products that support their services, may not be your friends after all.
Signal ticks all the right boxes for those of us who have had enough of these prying eyes. The organization behind Signal is open, so we can know what it’s doing with our data. (The answer? Not very much at all.) Moreover, the organization is dedicated to broadening the use of Signal without harvesting user data, and all communications are encrypted end-to-end with the keys stored on users’ devices (note on your devices and not at the provider’s server).
It is easy to install Signal on Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, and Debian-based Linux distributions, and it offers excellent support documentation with detailed installation instructions for each operating system.
See https://opensource.com/article/19/10/secure-private-messaging
#privacy #signal #instantmessaging
#^How to keep your messages private with an open source app
Messaging apps have changed how we communicate. Where would we be today without SMS? Can you imagine returning to a world where near-instant communication is not pervasive?