I posted this in another thread of someone asking why to use signal over whatsapp. Maybe it can be used to help convince some of your friends to download it
It's also completely open source and independently validated for security. There are no backdoors and EU has put signal in their crosshairs to scan messages before encrypted. Signal foundation has said they won't be able to serve EU if that occurs.
Russia has also removed signal from their country, other authoritarian countries as well. There's a censorship circumvention checkbox so if your country blocks signal, someone can make a node with a VPN to route traffic within the country to signal's servers.
It took some research to find that article, but it links to source code and other info. The source code is here, and docker is pretty simple to setup. There's some services online to setup remote instances using vps, but you can run and host it locally too with docker and a few terminal commands.
Bro you are a hero 💪 thank you for the information. Been trying to get some friends to move over to signal; this may be the info I needed all rolled up in one neat comment.
I will say that would be nice if you could add a 2nd phone in the same manner you can add a computer or tablet, as an accessory device that is dependent on the host device.
At least not last time I tried it! It makes you choose one or the other, though you can do initial setup with an android phone then transfer fully to the android tablet, but beware you then lose access from the android phone. AFAIK this makes no actual sense in technical protocol terms (note how same thing works fine in whatsapp android app already).
It works that way in Signal because your messages aren't synced to centralized location. Your messages are on your phone only. Any additional devices like a computer or iPad are dependent on your phone having an active connection as well.
I completely agree with this. It seems I didn't fully read the previous commend before responding. I responded again separately. If I can use an iPhone/iPad combo then I should be able to do the same with Android.
that simply doesn't explain the lack of multi-android-device capabilities given it works fine between e.g. phone and computer, or apple phone and android tablet, etc.
I do suspect the real answer is just "uh we haven't implemented it yet" rather than anything malicious.
Oh I was just responding to the "why it has to transfer devices" part. I agree that if I can use an iPhone as my main and an iPad as an additional, that I should be able to do the same thing with an Android phone/Android tablet combo.
I just want to make sure I understand: you put Signal on your phone, and then you can link 4 (5?) other non-mobile computing devices (e.g. laptop, desktop, certain tablets).
I get that the reason for this is because having Signal on two phones (or two devices with a mobile modem) makes your amount insecure. But why does this happen? Is it a quirk of the way Signal is written and it could one day get patched so that you can use Signal on multiple phones? Or is it a deliberately enforced policy because having signal on multiple phones opens up the account to having someone install your Signal account on a phone they physically control (or stealing your phone, or cloning your phone, etc)?
Signal has built in protection when you receive messages from unknown numbers. You can block or delete the message without the sender ever knowing the message went through. Google Messages, WhatsApp, and iMessage have no such protection:
Thanks for the good overview of the benefits of using Signal.
I have a question, though. Why do you think president Musk is trying to squelch Signal on Twitter?
Is it an attempt to keep users within the 'Twitter-Verse'? Is he worried that people might be communicating in a way that he can't see or manipulate? Idk.
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u/Pinkboyeee Feb 17 '25
I posted this in another thread of someone asking why to use signal over whatsapp. Maybe it can be used to help convince some of your friends to download it
It's also completely open source and independently validated for security. There are no backdoors and EU has put signal in their crosshairs to scan messages before encrypted. Signal foundation has said they won't be able to serve EU if that occurs.
Russia has also removed signal from their country, other authoritarian countries as well. There's a censorship circumvention checkbox so if your country blocks signal, someone can make a node with a VPN to route traffic within the country to signal's servers.
Source code: https://github.com/signalapp
Info about leaving EU: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40551260
And below is a screenshot of signal showing the censorship circumvention toggle (settings/privacy/advance) ** Not here due to subreddit rules
Edit: thanks for the award! I linked this below but will put it here for more complete post:
Setup a proxy node and VPN and you can be the inside man keeping your guys connected https://signal.org/blog/proxy-please
It took some research to find that article, but it links to source code and other info. The source code is here, and docker is pretty simple to setup. There's some services online to setup remote instances using vps, but you can run and host it locally too with docker and a few terminal commands.
Source code for convenience:
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-TLS-Proxy