Signal, A Good Alternative To WhatsApp
February 6, 2021You’ve undoubtedly heard of the kerfuffle surrounding WhatsApp’s policy changes. In an attempt to remain transparent with regards to its use of user data, the company ended up bungling the delivery. Instead of projecting a forthcoming presence, it was seen by many as a thinly veiled swipe at data privacy. Many disgruntled users, have since jumped ship.
People who were worried about their personal chat data, decided to seek refuge in an alternative. There are many messaging clients for Android and iOS, but choosing a suitable alternative will need to depend mainly upon safeguarding user privacy.
The most obvious of the lot are Telegram and Signal. But the latter, seems to tout better encryption and privacy policies. Firstly, Signal uses an open source end-to-end encryption service that can be examined and scrutinized by the general public. This means that Signal is transparent about how it keeps your messages secure.
Besides this, These are some other advantages:
Signal Doesn’t Want To Know Much About You
The company is serious about storing minimal information on its servers. In general it doesn’t store a record of your contacts, social graph, conversation lists, location, user avatar, user profile name, group memberships, group titles or group avatars. It’s a breath of fresh air in comparison to our de facto messaging client.
Signal is run by a nonprofit and independent organization
Facebook bought Whatsapp for a reason. And given the social media company’s track record with user privacy, one’s mistrust of the messaging client is well placed. Signal doesn’t answer to any tech bigwigs or data mining corporations. Its development is supported by grants and donations from the general public, that’s it!
No Hidden Agenda
Signal isn’t linked to ad tracking, affiliate marketers or other kinds of advertising mechanism. Since it is completely funded by grants and donations, there’s little need for the company to harvest your data and sell it to third party companies. This is something unheard of in this day and age.
Similar Functionality to Whatsapp, but better
Unlike Telegram, Signal seems to emulate Whatsapp functionality in several ways. The general interface and chat responses are familiar. You can share Share text, voice messages, photos, videos, GIFs and files for free. Signal uses your phone’s data connection so you can avoid SMS and MMS fees.
It also marks sent and read messages albeit with different icons and colours. And you can choose to disable read recipients and typing indicators. But unlike Whatsapp you can change the colour themes of individual chats. Instead of seeing the same green hue, you can choose from a palette of colours. And best of all, there’s no limit to how often you can do this.
Credit: Signal
Better Group Messaging Features
You can provide links to contacts when inviting them to a group chat. Anyone with the link can join, negating the need for them to be added individually. You can also make video calls with anyone in the world as long as they are using the Signal app.
When you start or join a group call, Signal will display the participants in a grid view. You can also swipe up to switch to a view that automatically focuses the screen on who is speaking, and it will update in real time as the active speaker changes.
Signal Is Used By Many Privacy Advocates
Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who alerted us to certain intelligence agencies’ unsavory surveillance practices, uses Signal. The same is true of Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey and several other well known individuals because of its many advantages.
Signal is available for both Android and iOS. Give it a chance and it will probably grow on you.
