A beginner’s guide to using Signal

Keep your backstage messages private.

If you hadn’t heard of Signal earlier this week, chances are you’re good alert of it now. The messaging app was thrust into the quality connected Monday erstwhile The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was mistakenly added to a radical chat involving apical subject officials readying an airstrike. Even though it entered the sermon for highly antithetic reasons, Signal has been, and remains, a well-regarded messaging level for unafraid communication. It’s not foolproof — accent connected fool, successful this lawsuit — but it’s worthy knowing what it is and however it works, adjacent if you’re not a idiosyncratic who deals with highly confidential information.

What is Signal?

Signal is simply a messaging app. You download it to your iOS oregon Android device, nexus your telephone number, and you’re acceptable to spell — conscionable similar different services similar WhatsApp oregon Telegram. The happening that makes Signal antithetic is its accent connected privacy. Communication connected the level is end-to-end encrypted by default, and the app offers further protections to support your backstage discussions private.

Why is end-to-end encryption important?

Aside from, say, walking implicit to idiosyncratic and whispering successful their ear, end-to-end encryption …

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.