marketinglefts

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.

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.

Read More : https://marketinglefts.blogspot.com/