Signal, a popular messages -app, came into the spotlight this week after reports that various officials from the Senior Trump administration had used the tool to perform war planning -accidentally including a journalist in the message group.
The app, which was started in 2014 and has hundreds of millions of users, is popular with journalists, activists, privacy experts and politicians – wants to protect anyone who wants to protect his or her communication with coding.
But the use of the app by government officials resulted in an infringement of the information that took place outside the secure government channels that would normally be used for classified and very sensitive war planning. The incident asked questions about the safety of Signal and why government officials used it. (Federal officials are generally not allowed to install a signal on their government issues.)
This is what to know.
What is the signal used for?
Signal is a coded messaging application that is used to communicate safely. It codes reports from the end to finish, which means what a user says is encrypted on the user's device and is not decoded until it reaches the recipient. This method protects the message against intercepted and read by everyone, including internet providers, hackers or signal themselves while it is on the road.
Users can also set signal messages to disappear after a certain time. Users who want their messages to disappear can engage the function in the settings for each of their individual chats.
Who owns Signal?
Signal is owned by an independent non -profit in the United States called the Signal Foundation. It is funded by donations from his users and by subsidies.
The foundation was started in 2018 with a donation of $ 50 million from Brian Acton, a co-founder of WhatsApp, another message platform, which Facebook bought in 2014. Mr. Acton left WhatsApp to start the Signal Foundation after disputes with Facebook, which is now known as Meta, about plans to make money with his message service.
Mr. Acton came to Moxie Marlinspike, a cryptograph who designed the Signal security system to create the Signal Foundation. The foundation is structured to prevent signal ever having an incentive to sell user data.
“There are so many good reasons to be on a signal,” wrote Mr. Marlinspike, who in 2022 of the board of the foundation of the foundation, in a post on X Monday. “Now the possibility for the vice president of the United States of America, to randomly add to a group cat for coordination of sensitive military operations. Do not sleep in this opportunity.”
Is signal safe?
Yes. Signal is generally regarded as the most safe messages app on the market, because of the coding technology and other measures that are designed to secure users' data.
The underlying coding technology is Open Source, which means that the code is made public and enables technologists outside the non -profit organizations to investigate and identify errors. The technology also has a license and used by other services, such as WhatsApp.
This coding technology has been crucial when signal has been a target of foreign hackers. Russia tried to investigate when Ukrainians use signal, and in February Google researchers said that Russian hackers had tried to hijack the signal accounts of users. Although the second attack was effective, it worked by misleading users to add rogue devices to their signal accounts, not by breaking the coding of the signal.
“Phishing attacks on people who use popular applications and websites are a fact of life on the internet,” said Jun Harada, a spokesperson for the signal. “Once we heard that signal users were the target, and how they were the target, we introduced extra warnings and in-app warnings to protect people against the victim of phishing attacks.”
In the case of a security infringement, signal has been designed to keep as few user data as possible, so that minimal information is exposed. Unlike other message services, the company does not store contacts from users or other identifying data that can indicate how a person used the service.
That does not mean that signal is the ideal service for communicating war plans. If the device of a user is affected, his or her signal messages can be read and the use of a communication system approved by the government can prevent civil servants from unintentionally, including a journalist in a war planning discussion.
Is signal safe for texting?
Yes, in general, although users must be careful to check new contacts, just as they can go on any other social platform.
And when they add people to their group chats, they might want to take an extra moment to ensure that they have recorded the right contacts.
