Save our Signal

For a few years now I have been championing the Signal app as the most secure and private way to communicate digitally due to its free and open-source model, and it’s end-to-end encryption protocol. What the former means is the makers of Signal have little to no incentive to spy on you or harvest personal information to sell or target ads to you, while the latter means it would be practically impossible for them to even do so. If there was a security breach, it would be discovered quickly by the community, which is another benefit of open-sourced software. Even if they decided to sell the app, like WhatsApp did to Facebook, the way the app was built would also make it difficult to do so.

There is a downside to being 100% open-source, however, and that is a lack of steady funding. Signal’s group of volunteer developers have mostly been able to keep up with demand as the app's user base grows but things have recently come to a head, mostly due to WhatsApp being opened up by Facebook and partly because of the civil unrest in the United States. This was made obvious on Thursday when Signal was down for much of the day. Because Signal is 100% funded by donations, they could most certainly use some help right now, as infrastructure costs rise as the number of users do. If you are like me and support open-source, secure, and private communications, which is essential for free speech and a healthy democracy, please consider making a donation of any amount to Signal today. And if you aren’t already using it as a replacement for SMS, phone calls, or video calls, download Signal right now.