There are a lot of messaging apps out there but most people are only familiar with WhatsApp because it is the most popular and widely used messaging app in the world.
There is also telegram, which gained some level of popularity after WhatsApp suffered an outage some few years ago. One messaging app that is not popular is Signal, and that is what today’s article is about.
Signal has been seeing a lot of usages recently after WhatsApp made announcement some time ago that it would be sharing data with its parent company, Facebook. Data sharing had been going on since 2016.
However, users of the app were able to opt-out until the recent announcement made it compulsory for all users. This resulted in about 7.5 million downloads of the signal app over five days. Since then, it has become one of the popular messaging abroad but that popularity does not seem to reflect in Ghana as few people are aware of the signal.
Signal is favored by most tech giants due to its incredible security and privacy features, which include keeping all your conversations safe from online prying eyes.
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How Signal Works
Signal is one of the safest messaging apps in the world at the moment. This is due to something we call ‘end-to-end encryption’ I am sure you have heard of this before WhatsApp also makes mention of the same process as to how it keeps your chats private.
This process works by encoding the message sent by the sender and making it possible for only the intended recipient to open it. Because of this, the government or Signal itself cannot snoop on your messages.
This has made the app very popular among journalists, government officials, and any other group of people who normally deal with classified information. However, messages on Signal can only be secure if both send and recipient are on the app.
Signal Features
Signal is a lot similar to other text messaging apps in existence. The only difference is that it comes with more security features than what most of these other messaging apps offer. It can be downloaded for free for IOS, android, mac, and PC. Android users can set Signal as their default messaging app if they wish to do so.
Basic level chat allows users to chat one on one with people or in groups where they can send pictures, videos, links, voice chats, and many others, just like most messaging apps do.
Users can also lock the app with a fingerprint scanner or passcode to keep other people from accessing the app on their phones. just like WhatsApp and Telegram, users need to use their phone numbers to join Signal.
However, you can keep your number private by signing up through a google voice number. IOS users can also change their settings to prevent their history from syncing with the cloud by turning off the option ‘show calls in recents’.
Messages can also be set to disappear after some time and photos and videos can be made to disappear after the recipient has viewed them. All this shows that Signal is more focused on the privacy of users. The app has a lot of features through which its view for the privacy of users has been met.
Conclusion
Although the signal is not that popular in Ghana at the moment, the app is gradually picking up as WhatsApp continues to force users to accept its demands. In a few years, it is possible that WhatsApp would be overthrown as the most widely sued app and be replaced by either Telegram or Signal, which are both highly focused on privacy and security.
Maybe it is time for you to see what Signal is all about. You can download the app for free for IOS, Android, PC, and Mac.
