

Those are protected by end-to-end encryption, with the encryption key stored on your device.


intelligence hoovers up its data-but it’s just fine for most people’s needs. Stuff like your phone number, phone numbers from your address book, details about your operating system and device, plus information about which other Facebook products you’re using.Īll of which may make WhatsApp a questionable choice if you’re a dissident, a spy, or a journalist trying to protect her sources from identification by spies-Facebook has a lousy privacy record after all, and Edward Snowden told the world how U.S. This month’s change really just removes the wording in the privacy policy that referred to the opt-out, while adding information for business users. Users of Signal, sell me on it.At the time, it gave existing users a brief window of opportunity to opt out of the data-sharing, but the vast majority of its users today have never had that opt-out. It does this using a private local WiFi connection between the two.

With this new feature, Signal is using your old and new phone to securely (end-to-end encryption) move everything over, as long as they are close to each other. According to the app’s changelog, Signal has added a way to “quickly and securely transfer your Signal information to a brand-new Android phone.” That’s big!Īs someone who constantly changes phones and also has to help family members when they do the same every year or so, not being able to easily move your Signal account to a new device sounded like too much of a pain. Today, Signal is pushing out a feature in beta that might have gotten me to stick with it. Telegram is fantastic! We also considered switching to Signal because of its level of security, but there was a single item holding me back from doing that. Since Hangouts is about to die and be replaced with Chat, an app I’ve tried several times and never took a liking to, we ended up settling on Telegram. Finding a fresh, updated, and secure messaging app is a process I just went through with my family, who all still use Google Hangouts.
