Is it still viable to use Signal for privacy in 2026? It’s centralized, and has had many suspicious occurrences in the past.(Unopen source server code, careless whisper exploit which is still active as far as I know, and the whole mobile coin situation.)
Thoughts?
As per usual, the answer is “depends on your threat model”. For a lot of sensitive communications, the centralised design and therefore ability to correlate metadata is a no-go. But if you’re just using it e.g. as a WhatsApp replacement to message your friends, it’s fine. It’s still the most polished and normie-friendly e2ee foss messenger.
if you are super private person or want to be anonymous, maybe you can choose SimpleX.
The client is open source, so it doesn’t matter what the server code is, you can see everything the client sends and therefore tell what possible data is being collected.
It’s run by a non-profit so there’s no shareholders to please.
Your messages and decryption key are not stored on their servers.
It’s been independently audited.
They have publicly posted responses to user information requests where they only provide the account creation date and last access time.
The (admittedly incompetent) US government recommends using Signal (for non-classified information) and top officials have been caught using it (Houthi Working Group).
You can never be 100% sure, but it appears to have excellent security and privacy.
Not to mention the FBI admitted that the only data from Singal they get is when the account signed up and when they last connected and they are very unhappy about so little information.
And the phone number! But still not a crime to be using signal (yet).
and top officials have been caught using it (Houthi Working Group).
For me this is the gold seal.
These guys desperately don’t want records of their acts to become public record and they have the authority to outright ask US Intelligence ‘Can you guys get access to this?’ and the app they choose is Signal.
And then proceed to invite a random journalist to their group 😅
If they were competent they would have other career options instead of working for this administration.
Many people have already commented saying it’s good to go, but I also wanted to add, I have dug into their actual encrypted group messaging protocols a few years ago because I was interested in using it for a different use case, and I would say it’s pretty well thought out. I trust it, I use it daily, and I’ve looked at the code. I’m not, nor have I ever been, an auditor, but I have been paid to do cryptography and red teaming/cyber security from big orgs, so I would say I have some professional experience in the matter.
Signal is the only thing I can get normies to use. Its that, or SMS, fb, or WhatsApp. And i refuse to use those.
A lot of people use Signal. It may not be the best solution out there, but it is so, so, so much better than the proprietary alternates.
One good thing is that a normie can easily use it as an alternative to WhatsApp, since the app design is so similar. I mean, it is easy for family and friends to understand and start using Signal, compared to something like Matrix or XMPP.
And if someone needs a little more hardening, they could use the fork called Molly, which has a few more security benefits over the stock app.
Shit these are great features. I had never heard of it before.
Molly is an independent Signal fork for Android with improved features:
Fully FOSS Contains no proprietary blobs, unlike Signal
Encrypted Protects database with Passphrase Encryption
Multi-Device Pair multiple devices to a single account
Material You Extra theme that follows your device palette
UnifiedPush Ungoogled notification system
Automatic Locking When you are gone for a set period of time
RAM Shredding Securely shreds sensitive data
Ooh! And you can add an F-Droid repo!
https://molly.im/fdroid/
Sure I could just look this up, but: know if molly can restore from regular signal backups off the top of your head?
I’m 80% sure, it does.
Yes it does ( did it like 5 weeks ago)
While centralisation continues to be a problem (as the recent AWS outage has shown), Signal continues to be the a sufficient compromise between privacy and usability that a non-technical user will actually use.
That said, I’m making contingency plans to set up an alternative for close family in case the US goes full retard and makes it inaccessible.
What’s your alternative?
I’m considering several, and haven’t made the decision yet: Matrix/Element, Briar, and Session are all on the table.
Session is closing in less than 90 days.
Session has now entered its final 90 days of operation. If we are unable to reach our funding goal within this period, the Session Technology Foundation (STF) will be forced to shut down.[…] This is our final appeal to the Session community: without your support, the STF will cease all operations on July 8, 2026.
You may want to read Why not Signal?, but I still use it.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml being as sharp as always, thank you for sharing this! I somehow missed that essay in the past, and recently even had a discussion where I argued in favor of signal. His overview makes some great points that shouldn’t be dismissed offhandedly. The important point is to not make the mistake of shunning signal in favor of an even less secure alternative. Also the user’s threat model should be taken into account. Those who aren’t anticapitalists (yet) might need to worry less about the concerns.
I think the text is somewhat dubious in its arguments, but this (and the arguments built on this assertion) is just plain wrong:
[Signals servers have] a few important pieces of data;
Message dates and times Message senders and recipients (via phone number identifiers)
Signal clients implement the Pond protocol. As a result, Signals servers know who a message is for (obviously, how else do you get the message) but cannot know who it is FROM.
I’ve been playing around with implementing a secure/private messenger demo for myself, and have been consistently impressed with how privacy preserving Signal is when reading their papers and code. I wish it was selfhostable, but apart from that, it’s great.
The server would be NICE to be OSS, but ultimately, privacy breaches are prevented client/protocol side.
Signal clients implement the Pond protocol. As a result, Signals servers know who a message is for (obviously, how else do you get the message) but cannot know who it is FROM.
Give me ssh access to signal’s centralized US-hosted server so I can verify this (IE that their centralized DB doesn’t store).
Otherwise this is a “trust me bro” claim, considering they have the phone numbers of everyone who signed up, and are the routing service for the messages you send.
I don’t really understand why you think this, can you explain? Signal stores, and has access to, no message metadata. They don’t know who your contacts are, which group chats you’re in, when you’re sending messages, or who you’re talking to.
To be convinced of this, take a look at the client source code, and compile the app yourself. None of this information ever leaves your phone without being encrypted or otherwise masked. No analysis of their server code is required to be convinced of this.
Signal stores, and has access to, no message metadata.
Phone numbers are the most important metadata you can give them, far more important than message content. It means your real identity / name and address. With phone numbers you can build social networking graphs: who talked to who, and when.
To be convinced of this, take a look at the client source code, and compile the app yourself.
Client source code is irrelevant here. Signal is a centralized service, you can’t verify what their US-based server is actually running (although they did go a full year without publishing any server updates at one point, until they received a lot of backlash for it).
None of this information ever leaves your phone without being encrypted or otherwise masked.
You gave them your phone number / real identity when you signed up. The most important piece of info they could possibly give them, you already did.
Can you explain how signal will build a social network graph when it doesn’t know who sent any message, which group chats you’re in, or who is on your contact list? Again, none of this ever leaves your device without being encrypted, which you can check by looking at the client source code.
when it doesn’t know who sent any message
They have your phone number. You gave it to them when you signed up.
which group chats you’re in
Signal wouldn’t know how to route messages if it didn’t store this info.
These are super cool parts of signal’s architecture, that are not obvious to understand, but you can truly verify client side that (1) signal only sees an IP address, no phone number, associated with each outgoing message, and (2) signal has no idea who is in which group chat and which permissions you have in those chats.
The first one is pretty simple: you don’t prove to signal who you are, signal just routes packets and lets the receiver verify that the sender is who they say they are by verifying a short lived certificate attesting your identity.
The second one is more interesting: group chats are implemented as a complete graph of direct messages between all participants. In order to update the group state, you send Signal a zero-knowledge proof that you are a member of the group, which convinces Signal that you can add or remove people, without ever revealing your identity. This same mechanism is used to prevent griefing, spam, and DDOS attacks for sealed sender.
Again, both of these can be verified by only looking at the client source code, and nothing else.
More info: https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-private-group-system/
Fuck dessalines tho
Just remember that if you, or anyone you are talking to, has notifications turned on (in the app itself), that conversation is now outside of signal and a lot easier to get to.
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Which is an everything problem, not a signal problem. Just in case it sounds like a signal problem.
Doesn’t it depend on what’s in the notifications?
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Who do you want privacy from and why?
That’s not a rhetorical question. It matters. If you want privacy from corporations and governments doing mass surveillance because you’re against mass surveillance in principle, Signal is great! As long as you don’t give janky apps permission to read your notifications, or you limit what Signal shows in its notifications, your device won’t leak to those kinds of threat actors. You can’t be sure everyone you talk to is as fastidious though.
If the cops, gangsters, or similar are likely to target you and the people you’re talking to directly, there’s a good chance just using Signal without a security plan won’t keep them from getting the contents of the conversation as in this recent incident where the FBI extracted deleted messages from notification logs. To defend against that specific attack, everyone needs to configure Signal to keep message content and contact details out of the notification. Dedicated devices for secure communication set up by someone who knows what they’re doing are ideal in this situation. Signal is still a good choice here, but Signal alone won’t guarantee privacy.
If you’re being targeted by an intelligence agency from a rich country that has allocated a significant budget to surveil you in particular, you’re probably screwed. There’s plenty of public information about how US government officials and contractors are required to work with classified information to get a sense of how you might try to mount a defense. It’s guaranteed to be inconvenient.
agreed and to add to this:
Dedicated devices for secure communication set up by someone who knows what they’re doing are ideal in this situation.
becoming your own expert is unfeasible for 99.999999999999999999999999999999999% of people and expecting it is no different than expecting people to become their own lawyer, dentist, or doctor.
If you’re being targeted by an intelligence agency from a rich country that has allocated a significant budget to surveil you in particular, you’re probably screwed
the bar against protecting yourself from the local police in the united states is MUCH lower than the cia, nsa, mossad, etc. and should be the goal of most projects since it’s the most realistic and the most likely to happen; there’s next to nothing that can be done against he alternatives.
the alternative is that unfeasible ultra high bar and judges in the united states have a history of holding people in jail for years for contempt of court of not providing passwords or using duress like options on their electronic equipment.
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The stories I’ve heard where Signal messages have been extracted or otherwise accessed was from beyond either end. Someone invited a journalist to a private group chat. Someone handed someone else an unlocked device. The most alarming one is apparently Apple uploads every push notification your device gets to their servers. So if you are concerned about privacy there’s a feature in Signal to set push notifications to only say “you got a message” and not include the sender or message contents in the notification.
I haven’t heard of Signal itself leaking messages.
This is what people don’t get when it comes to that story about the journalist. You literally have to go out of your way to invite someone into a group chat. That does not happen on accident on Signal.
I had to explain that to a few people who heard that story and were super skeptical about Signal being dangerous. Which is ironic because the same people would be using messenger and think nothing of it.
I think the thing with Signal is “Oh it’s secure. Very secure. You don’t get better security in an app you can just install and use. You can get better security but you gotta like, learn shit about security.” And that makes people use Signal without learning shit about security. So they make mistakes on their end. Those mistakes range in stupidity from “handed a cop my unlocked phone” to “didn’t know Apple and Google peek at all your push notifications.”
I mean, I think the best rule of thumb is that unless you’re a tech wizard, you don’t have online privacy. At all.
I don’t believe anything is super safe and secure online. Not even Signal.
I always treat my online activity as if I am being surveilled because I probably am. Luckily I’m a boring bitch, so I don’t really have anything to hide, but I do appreciate that I can stay in touch with friends and family without having to linger on Facebook anymore. So there’s that.
The only time I feel annoyed about people talking about Signal is when they talk about it as if it’s this super sketchy app that shares your data when literally every single friggin platform online does that and the same skeptical people use them all the time without question.
That part annoys me because people keep acting like we aren’t already completely naked and our information owned by companies who do god knows what with it. If people are aware that everything they do is being surveilled and used for whatever purpose, then I don’t really mind, but it doesn’t seem like that is the case for many people. I genuinely still cannot believe how many people jumped on the DNA test trend, for example. Like holy shit, just give them your firstborn too, while you’re at it. XD but hey, we all make stupid mistakes now and again. I remember my first smartphone having a thumbprint lock and I just did that throughout my early to mid 20s without thinking about it. At least they only have one of my thumbprints but yeah. It’s so insidious, the way the tech world has lured us into giving up our information willingly.
The worst thing anyone can do when they are online is to believe they have any privacy. That is hubris.
are you me? because i look at it the same way, plus the fact that i always expect to be hopelessly outclassed by cia/nsa/mimossad/etc. so i always presume that everything i do online or on my phone is being broadcast to them in real time.
my only hope is that i’m also so boring and inconsequential to them that they don’t give a rat’s ass at whatever i do. lol
Yeah, exactly. I just always found it to be silly and arrogant to assume that I could ever outsmart agencies, organisations and companies that not only specializes in getting my data, but also built the tech and the systems I am navigating.
And I mean, I have enjoyed true crime since the Forensic Files were still explaining to normal citizens what DNA is and how that technology is applied in crime cases. I have casually followed the development of forensic sciences for at least two decades and let me tell you, there ain’t no way you can hide online. The ones who can either have the right connections, are unbelievably skilled and cautious with tech or they don’t use technology at all and live in an off grid cabin somewhere, where nobody uses smartphones.
I never thought I would see a Unabomber lifestyle endorsement on Lemmy. Lol
I dunno if I would call it an endorsement. It was more so to show how impossible it is to have privacy online, lol. You’d have to go to extremes to avoid having any information about you end up online. And honestly, even if you went off grid in a cabin somewhere, there still is no guarantee that you will succeed in keeping yourself offline entirely. Kaczynski is probably also a bad example as you can find pretty much everything there is to know about him online. A selfinflicted fate.
Anyways, the point is that privacy doesn’t really exist if you own a phone, tablet or computer.
IIRC Android has the same issue with push notifications, if you really care about privacy you should disable showing any content from any messaging app in your notifications unless you want Google or Apple to collect it
That’s why I use UnifiedPush
This is not true for Signal. Other apps may send the notification content but signal uses FCM to push a simple notification to wake the device and tell signal to fetch the actual notification. You can use the full text / info notification and know that Google does not see it.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/1279-sandboxed-google-play-for-push-notifications-breaks-privacy/9
That is true for Signal, the FBI extracted Signal message content from Apple’s push notification system: https://www.404media.co/fbi-extracts-suspects-deleted-signal-messages-saved-in-iphone-notification-database-2/
The only thing to learn is everything is bullshit and nothing has ever been okay.
We are both right 😆
It is true for Signal on Apple devices.
It is not true for Signal on Android devices*
*Well I’m using grapheneOS so I feel more comfortable in my case but a regular Android device with full access Google Play Services? That I’m not so sure about. It’s conceivable that Google has a way to read the final notification (FCM push -> Signal fetches and displays message -> Google can read all notifications on the device, FCM or otherwise) 😬
Can you trust what a Pixel is doing with its 5G modem?
I’m not an expert or even close to that, so no, not really I suppose. Can you really trust any device when it comes down to the hardware level? I wouldn’t trust an iPhone or any other phone more. Again, while I’m not an expert, I’d trust grapheneOS for software over any other mobile OS. Probably trust to that effect would be grapheneOS >>>> iOS >> everything else. But full trust in any hardware? Who really knows
Yes but using it though Molly is more secure
Yes. You will find a lot of randos saying no, but the consensus among security professionals and researchers is that it is still the current standard. Not to say that it doesn’t deserve scrutiny or criticism, or that other projects aren’t important to develop.
Also, will I be able to reach people with any alternatives? It’s not like they’ll all switch to the app I choose, or at least I’m not that popular for them to follow me anywhere, well… worse, I still have to open Messenger (FB/meta) from time to time to get in touch with some of them 🤮🤢
They don’t have phone numbers? I will risk the known exposure through the phone system before anything Meta or LinkedIn. Basically if fb or insta is your contact choice, I am going to phone or sms instead.
Signal for people I know IRL, Simplex for those I don’t.
