[luuurker]

For a while I wanted Signal to get popular so I wouldn't have to use other less private and secure apps, but now... I use it with close friends and close family... and that's it. I don't even mention it to most... I fear that popularity would bring more attention to the app and, with it, political and legal issues.

[OutOfHere]

Are you implying that there are backdoors in WhatsApp?

[luuurker]

No, although it used (not sure if it still does) to encourage people to enable backups. On Android I believe the default was Google Drive, so you'd have people send their chats to Google in plain text.

iMessages is another example of a secure service that lets users "break" encryption. As soon we enable cloud features for it to work across devices, the key is uploaded to iCloud, essentially making chats plain text to Apple.

[para_parolu]

Well, we don’t see Mark arrested…

[krick]

I'm more surprised by the subtle implication everyone makes that there's no backdoors in Signal. That would be weird assumption to make.

[OutOfHere]

The main "backdoor" to Signal is that having access to the phone can leak all of Signal's data. If the phone OS is backdoored, then Signal is already compromised. Anyway, the point is not to make it impossible to exfiltrate data, but to make it as hard as possible.

[willywanker]

That isn't a Signal exclusive flaw. If the phone OS is backdoored, everything on it is compromised.