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?
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.
use xmpp like me
I was using XMPP two decades ago when it was first introduced (before smartphones) and it was then a great step forward compared to the other IM clients of the time: AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, MSN Messenger, etc.
It was great that it was going to be interoperable by design, particularly exciting when Google jumped on the XMPP bandwagon with native support in whichever of their dozens of chat apps was current at the time. But like nearly everything that Google runs through Beta, it was eventually scrapped, and they returned to their walled garden.
XMPP has been flailing for a long time and it’s not in a position to grow. Signal is far and away the best balance available today among security, privacy, usability, and network effects meaning other people to communicate with.
And also have 0 friends 😅
Seriously, not a single real life person is going to use something like xmpp.
I use XMPP. Don’t be hatin’.
Signal is the only thing I can get normies to use. Its that, or SMS, fb, or WhatsApp. And i refuse to use those.
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.
PRODUCT PITCH: Hey everyone, I have a great idea for a secure / private messaging service.
It’s hosted in the US, subject to its pervasive spying laws including national security letters.
Also I need all your phone numbers.
Also no you can’t host this yourself, I run the only server.
Everyone who uses signal and supports it, is falling for this pitch.
Everyone who uses signal and supports it, is falling for this pitch.
No, because it does not reflect the truth. You’ve to see the full picture.
Name a more secure way to communicate with normies. They’re not going to use SimpleX or Matrix…
People are not as stupid as these large centralized sites like signal keep telling you they are. Ppl figured out how to make accounts on different services, forums, and platforms since the internet began. It is no more difficult to make a matrix account, or install simpleX than it is anything else. My partner and I figured out simplex within 10 minutes.
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if you are super private person or want to be anonymous, maybe you can choose SimpleX.
IMHO the question depends on :
- who you are (boring, rando, political dissident, journalist, etc)
- who you talk to (family, friends, work, etc)
- what alternatives actually exist
So… sure Signal is not perfect but if you can’t convince your family members to move to DeltaChat it sure beats using WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.
I’m a boring rando but I dare defy Dear Leader so I’m probably being watched.
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 😅
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.
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.
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/
I wish this was available for iOS.
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 🤮🤢
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 removed 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.
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You may want to read Why not Signal?, but I still use it.
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/
@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.
Fuck dessalines tho
I trust Signal and like it a lot, but I do wish they’d remove the stupid MobileCoin rubbish.
Agreed! I won’t consider donating to them until they drop it.
You people are so fucking insufferable. You’ll freeload off of them but the second they try to pay the bills you screech.
I’m SURE, you were totally going to pay you just saw the coin and turned away 🙄
Do you find it that hard to believe that other people have principles?
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.
Which is an everything problem, not a signal problem. Just in case it sounds like a signal problem.
This was recently kinda misrepresented in the media, in my opinion.
Yes, notifications can leave traces. But it’s traces on the device itself that can be forensically extracted. Though notifications are pushed through Apple’s/Google’s servers, the contents are encrypted end-to-end.
Not if you set notifications to not show any content. Other than the sender, of course, which could be problematic depending who sends the message.
Doesn’t it depend on what’s in the notifications?
