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Under Donald Trump’s administration, Paranoia about surveillance is not just afraid – it is a reality for many federal workers who are encouraged to observe and report the activities of their employees.
As a result, more federal employees charge and use the Signal Chat -App for the first time to communicate with each other about their jobs and their opinions.
Should you do the same? Even if you are not a person who works with a federal authority, you may want to speak more securely about forbidden books, concerns about health care, “Dei” initiatives or other topics that are controversial through the Trump administration.
In this case, you should take into account the advantages of an end-to-end encryption measuring app such as Signal, say data protection experts.
Why recommend data protection experts signal
The safest way to conduct an online conversation privately is to use end-to-end encryption. This is what signal, an independent non-profit association, uses for its news and call app.
End-to-end encryption means that the content and the metadata are encrypted locally in your messages and never stored on the Signal servers. In this way, only your intended recipient can read your messages.
“It is found that the encryption key is locally on your phone, so that not even the people who have carried out signal to get their data,” said Aaron Pritz, CEO of cybersecurity, reveals the risk. Since Signal “does not have the encryption key, you cannot continue to provide the data to state units or so that you can use the data to be drawn to you”.
And that is exactly the scenario about which government employees are concerned.
According to reports, the federal employees fear that large technology companies such as Meta-Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger belong and whose CEO was depicted at Trump’s inauguration on a seat in the city center that would hand over information to the government. Meta itself reported that from January to June 2024, 81,884 state inquiries for US user data and 87% of the cases were created as an answer “some data”.
On the other hand, we take what happened with Signal when it received a summary of a lawyer from the US government in 2021 to hand over data about one of his users. Signal could only share if the account was created and the date on which the account was last connected to the signal service – and not the other metadata such as the name, the address, the correspondence, the contacts or the call records of this person.
As Signal says, Signal has no access to your news due to the end-to-end encryption. Your chat list; Their groups; Your contacts; Your stickers; Your profile name or avatar; Or even the gifs you are looking for. “
Another signal advantage? Signal gives all users the same data protection experience, regardless of which devices people use.
“Everyone has the same settings [on Signal,] This means that everyone enables a fundamental basic protective measures at least by default, ”said Thorin Klosowski, a security and data protection activist for the electronic frontier foundation, the signal.
In contrast, the end-to-end encryption of Apple only applies if everyone with which you chat also uses an Apple device. This means that, as long as a person uses an Android device in their group chat, which are encrypted in Apple’s message apps from end-to-end.
In other words, the green text color you see when an Android device reports is the Apple signaling that you speak to an Android user -and that your privacy is affected.
Similarly, Google’s chat app is only from end-to-end-encrypted when all use their app.
Pritz, who uses signal for group chats, said it also works seamlessly between Android and iPhone users. “Only from the perspective of user -friendliness, [Signal] Can make these group threads much easier, ”he said.
And if you are someone who is overwhelmed by constant group notifications, “it can be used to divide certain conversations that you do not want in a normal text thread,” said Pritz.
In addition to the end-to-end encryption, signal with functions with which you can limit the information you have shared. You can set messages after a certain time and switch off the fuses for the chat course as two examples. You can register for your iOS or Android device or desktop.
The disadvantages of the signal
Just because signal chats from end-to-end-encrypted are not that your private conversation is guaranteed to stay private.
“If someone had physical access to a phone, they could obviously see what talks are doing. When it is activated, people can screenshot. You can record calls, ”said Klosowski as examples.
There are steps to limit your signal account on unwanted devices. You can request signal to activate a registration lock if your number is registered on another device, for example.
Data protection experts recommend that you only use signal on your personal devices via your work equipment, since your company may also be able to access information about which apps are also installed. And it could violate the technological usage policy of your employer.
“I have seen many circumstances under which someone may not notice that they would make risks and they didn’t ask,” said Pritz.
If you want a secret to be kept secret, it ultimately depends on how much you trust the people in your group chat – even if it is a safe messaging app and signal.
“If there are many people or people in one workplace [in your group chat]Each of them could be a screenshoting or recording, ”said Klosowski.
