Hey Folks! Someone in my family (Person A), has talked to a guy, who is working in the tech world, about if it make sense to use Signal, over Messenger, Snap, WhatsApp, with privacy in mind. The tech guy said, there is no difference, and that its not making sense to use it and that its almost the same. I know Signal is discussed alot here, but im now looking for some arguments, and facts to tell the one from my family, that the tech guy is wrong. What arguments can i use, why is Signal better in privacy, then the other alternatives? Person A, has always been sceptical about me beeing so privacy minded, and A thinks that there is nothing to do to protect, and is one of thoese saying : I have nothing to hide.
Edit: thank you for the help
Signal is the only app on that list whose app is open source. That means it can be audited to see if they are telling the truth.
You cannot say the same for the others and you just have to take them at their word. Should we take Facebook at their word?
Show them this: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/22/whatsapp-wins-reprieve-in-india-over-user-data-sharing/
The dispute began when WhatsApp required users to accept expanded data sharing with Meta’s platforms or risk losing access to the messaging service. While European users can opt out of such sharing, Indian users cannot — a distinction that regulators found problematic.
Meta doesn’t know what you’re talking about, because WhatsApp is e2ee. But they know:
- who are you talking to
- when
- how often
- what else were you doing before/during/after the talk
- links that are shared (the preview fetch is not e2ee afaik)
These are all valuable metadata and given enough of it, they can even infer what you were talking about. Target you with ads on their other platforms (but rumors are that WhatsApp will have ads inside eventually)
(the preview fetch is not e2ee afaik)
Technically, it is, but end to end encryption only covers the data between the ends, and not what one of the ends chooses to do with it. If one end of the conversation chooses to log the conversation in an insecure way, the conversation itself might technically be encrypted, but the contents of the conversation can be learned by another. Or if one end simply chooses to forward a message to a new party not part of the original conversation.
The link previews are happening outside of the conversation, and that action can be seen by people like the owner of the website, your ISP, and maybe WhatsApp itself (if configured in that way, not sure if it does).
So end to end isn’t a panacea. You have to understand how it fits into the broader context of security and threat models.
For the purposes of the average person the tech guy in your op is absolutely 100% correct.
All the platforms listed use transport encryption and that’s enough to avoid mitm surveillance which is enough for most people.
Most people’s “threat model” is the police or a pi. All the apps listed including signal have to comply with orders from American police and have “sidechain attacks” that involve stuff like getting some member of the groupchat’s device and scrolling up or tricking someone into giving up sensitive information.
WhatsApp tracks when and who you talk with.
Thar information is used to put people on government target lists and kill them.
I think that this is a pretty good reason.
If the billionaires are using it for privacy, then it is likely the best one.
I mean, how much do you wanna bet that they all had a private dinner with the other billionaires that own other apps and had a private conversation about whether their messages are actually private and able to be hid from the government?
Here are 28 arguments for you to use.
These are not designed to penetrate disinformation.
that’s a lot of arguments
Signal is the best alternative to Meta messaging apps and to Snapchat for normies.
Variants of this exact question seem to be asked at the rate of about 3 per week.
WhatsApp fails to include a libre software licence text file. We do NOT control it, anti-libre software.
This is the most efficient attack and defence. Do NOT copy what others are saying or you WILL get trapped.
I haven’t check in a while but I think I remember that proprietary app either do not have security audits or they failed them. You should check though I am not 100% sure.
If we can’t self host Signal, it isn’t much better than WhatsApp.
Signal is not the answer. Signal’s backend is essentially closed-source, and to my knowledge none of their binaries are reproducible with the code available. If you really want privacy and security in E2EE, you want somethjng that’s completely open-source (front and backend), and can be self-hosted entirely. Matrix is this.
