Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal
Download Signal? No, thank you.<p>The fact that the guy behind it is hyping it via the New York Times, a generalist publication, instead of validating the thing through professional cryptographers (which he isn&#x27;t) and recognised privacy champions such as the EFF is very telling.<p>The thing has not been properly validated or verified (for a start, because there is no design document to validate against, and no published goals to verify against), it uses an ad-hoc encryption scheme from a non-cryptographer, it is not open source (see F-Droid discussion why it&#x27;s not there), it uses hardwired servers controlled by a party or parties which are not known to be trustworthy, and apparently it requires Google Play services, which nobody who is truly concerned about their privacy is going to use in the first place (and definitely one should not).<p>From the way this is going, it is becoming clearer by the day that this is just another start-up, their target market are unsophisticated but paranoid users and hipsters with no real need for privacy but who think they should make some kind of statement. Their plan is to hype it up (e.g., via the NYT), get enough users, then get bought by one of the so-called &quot;social media&quot; players. It is more attractive to them than Telegram because the latter is run by a Russian, which to the American public sounds sinister (Mr Brin and countless other great scientists and innovators notwithstanding), and their servers are probably based in Germany, which is a bit more of a problem since there are (still) some proper privacy laws over there, and which would cause some headaches to the acquiring party. Besides which, there is a good chance that their current investors come from those &quot;social media&quot;, or are the usual Silicon Valley VC crowd, so things stay between friends, as it were.<p>So, in brief:<p>* If you want a new Skype, go for it.<p>* If you care about the privacy of your communications, you should avoid it.<p>* If you <i>need</i> to keep your comms private, you <i>must</i> avoid it.<p>Anyone disagrees? Feel free to reply and tell me why!