Thanks to Trump’s National Security Adviser, Michael Waltz, the whole world now knows what Signal is. It’s an app available for both Apple and Android that permits encrypted texting (and phone calls!) between two people who both have the Signal app on their phones. The reason why Signal stands out is because it employs what is known as “end to end encryption” which means the messages are encrypted on the sender’s phone and are never decrypted until they reach the recipient’s phone. No one in between – not the phone companies, not Google, not Apple, and not Signal itself have any way of knowing what the message says. In fact, Signal itself goes one step further and doesn’t keep any records of who you are communicating with. They do this in case they are subpoenaed for information about their users – because they haven’t saved anything, there’s nothing to be given up to the authorities.
In fact, all they have saved about you is the time and date that you signed up and the time and date that you last connected (this permits them to do things like deactivating accounts that haven’t been used in a long time).
Because of this and because it’s easy to use and because it has been closely vetted by experts, Signal is one of the first apps that is recommended to people looking to keep their communications secure. That being said, it’s not appropriate for US government work because of various laws that require the government to keep copies of its communication for later auditing should that become necessary.
You can get started with Signal by,
- Visiting their website.
- Obtaining the software from their download page.
- Reading Wired magazine’s article about Signal’s advanced features.