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I ditched Signal in favour of WhatsApp given I believe the tech behind it was the same and the fact that a lot of my contacts are already on WhatsApp. The NYT a
by webjames 10y ago
I ditched Signal in favour of WhatsApp given I believe the tech behind it was the same and the fact that a lot of my contacts are already on WhatsApp. The NYT article indicates that WhatsApp is still able to collect more information than Signal does collect.
- gyigdjjlpp 10y agoYou _assume_ that WhatsApp uses signal and not clear text (or some other broken lib)
- throw9322 10y agoOne important thing to note is that, as far as I know, WhatsApp backups are stored in plain text. So to have secure messaging, you must disable backups and you must trust that the other people you're messaging have also disabled backups.
- mtgx 10y agoThe difference is you never know when Whatsapp may switch off that end-to-end encryption. Second, Signal only stores account creation date and I believe account deletion, or some other super-basic info like that. But that's it. Meanwhile, not only does Whatsapp collect much more metadata, including the groups of which you're part, but it has also started sharing that data with Facebook recently. I'm not saying you should stop using Whatsapp, though. I still think it's a better alternative to iMessage/Hangouts/Skype/Telegram. But at the same time you should slowly transition your most important contacts to Signal, too. One nice extra feature Signal has over Whatsapp now is Snapchat-like disappearing messages, so at least you may be able to convince some friends with that.