SIGNAL: PRIVACY TO CHALLENGE WHATSAPP
The pursuit of privacy has become a must in the new technological era. In a world where our conversations, our research and everything we do on the internet are a matter of exchange and an advertising source, there are many who want to rediscover a minimum of lost freedom. We are increasingly looking for punctual and efficient services that are also capable of ensuring that the data they use remains private. hollyhealthfitness
Messaging apps have long been at the center of these discussions,
because they are potentially able to have in their hands what is most intimate
on the internet, our private conversations with our acquaintances. For years we
have been looking for the right tool to achieve this goal: it seems that what
has just begun has become the year of Signal.
Discovering Signal
Signal has been an app on the market for 8 years now. It is
an instant messaging service with functions practically equal to those offered
by much more important and used services such as WhatsApp or Telegram. You
register with your phone number and have the option to start single or group
chats with your contacts. Nothing could be simpler and nothing profoundly
different from what similar apps already do. What the fortune of this
application has been doing in recent weeks is its almost obsessive attention to
privacy .
Where other apps, that of Facebook above all, are showing
many gaps and creating many headaches, Signal has transformed it into a real
strength, a distinctive trait that is making its fortune and could do so in the
future. . With the recent controversy over the change of conditions of use
regarding privacy on WhatsApp, many are looking for a real alternative. Signal
seems to have suddenly become the messaging app of the moment .
Confidentiality at all levels
The application is based on an open source code, freely
accessible by anyone and on an end-to-end encryption system that makes sure
that conversations can only be seen between those who are doing them at that
moment. The cryptographic system is partly similar to that of WhatsApp, but in
some ways deeper and more accurate: in fact, Signal not only does not have
access to user conversations, but does not even store the metadata contained
within it, such as place, date and participants. to the session.
There is no cloud in which chats are saved, since these can
only be stored in the physical memories of the devices of those who initiate
those conversations. More than the goodness of its systems, however, to make
the fortune of Signal and its very nature:at its base there is no commercial
company but a real non-profit foundation .
The importance of metadata
The various security protocols appear to be the strongest
and safest on the market. What makes the difference, however, is precisely the
choice not to share metadata with the outside world , the pivot on which all
the controversy that has recently been affecting Facebook and WhatsApp was
born. When the changes to the conditions of use are implemented, in fact, all
the metadata of the conversations held on the popular app will be shared with
the rest of the group, giving life, in fact, to a true profiling on all
platforms that will lead to, this the fear of many, to more targeted
advertisements with which to target users.
Hence the anger of the members, unhappy that the company has
unilaterally changed its conditions only to take advantage of the data it
possesses. A very different modus operandi from Signal, which seems to make
transparency its trademark , guaranteeing security on multiple levels and
various options to show itself safe from any type of external interference.
A bit of history
To reassure many is also the story behind Signal. The
development of the app was from the beginning carried out by a group of privacy
activists and financed by one of the founders of WhatsApp, who left the company
in 2017 because he did not agree with the management carried out by Facebook.
The Signal Foundation has been funded by donations since its inception and is
managed by Moxie Marlinspike , a cryptography expert who over the years has
developed numerous data protection systems, including the homonymous Signal
Protocol , the end-to-end open system source on which practically all the
cryptographic systems of the mosts important instant messaging apps on the
market are based.
A not bad curriculum, reinforced by the most disparate
public awards, with Edward Snowden first and Elon Musk then who advised users
to install the service and use it instead of much more famous apps.
An unexpected success
The public recognition of the founder of Tesla has brought
to Signal a success like never before in its 8 years of life. In a short time,
it went from 10 to 50 million users , a sudden shock that even knocked down the
app's servers for a few hours. Now that the critical moment has been passed we
will find out if Signal will show a flash in the pan or if it will be able to
become a valid alternative to the most famous and most successful apps so far.
To date, its numbers are infinitely lower than those of WhatsApp, which can
count on two billion subscribers, and Telegram, stopping at 500 million, but
also strong with a return of popularity of a certain weight in the last period.
.
What all this will lead to is not known to us: the
domination ofWhatsApp and its popularity seem unassailable for now and, apart
from controversy, it does not seem that there are still similar services able
to overcome its reach and diffusion. We all use it and we will hardly be able
to part with it to migrate to apps that most of our contacts don't use.
Profiles for sale
However, it should be emphasized how much attention to
privacy must continue to be in the foreground, to guarantee our freedom in the
use of the network as much as possible. It must be said that even WhatsApp,
erroneously with respect to what many believe, does not have access to any of
our conversations which, in their content, remain private and available only to
senders and recipients. But also the security of the metadata that gravitate
around our conversations is an issue to be taken into strong consideration, due
to the misuse that commercial realities could make of it.
Like it or not, we are more than ever inserted into a system
that exploits our data for commercial purposes and that makes those data an
essential source of income. Most of the tools we use are placed in an economic
context where we and the use we make of the internet are the greatest source of
income.
Essential alternatives
Therefore, alternatives are welcome that try to carve out
safe niches, in which not to be afraid of being profiled or bombarded by
advertisements that know everything about what we do, where we are and our
habits. Signal is welcome and its positive aura, its desire to appear as far as
possible from the logic of the network market . Services thus, to avoid
critical points that have not yet emerged, represent the purest meaning of the
network, the one that has been increasingly sacrificed over the years: a free
place within everyone's reach, a way to explore the world with freedom and tranquility,
to communicate without fear and without constraints. Losing some of our privacy
for all of this is a sacrifice that sooner or later we will no longer be
willing to make.
