Although WhatsApp has been the most popular instant messaging app with over 1 billion downloads, the recent reports that have raised doubts over its encryption capabilities and the consequential threat to one's privacy have boosted another messaging application making way for ‘Signal’.
This instant messaging and voice calling application is fast becoming everybody’s favourite. Developed by the Open Whisper Systems, Signal compatible with both Android and iOS platforms uses end-to-end encryption and mechanism allowing users to verify the identity of their correspondents. The app slowly picked up popularity especially during the US elections. It is the flagship product from Open Whisper systems which provided end-to-end encryption protocol used by WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Google Allo.
Worldwide downloads of Signal grew by 70% by the end of 2016, mostly owing to the President-elect Trump's idea of surveillance and creation of a Muslim registry. Adding to the hike was NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden vouching for Open Whisper Systems and his revelations about surveillance conducted by NSA. Signal Protocol can also be used in Google Allo, by switching to "incognito mode".
Signal is earning praises for its security features and for retaining less information on users. Moreover, unlike WhatsApp, this app doesn't store any message metadata and stores only the last time the user was connected to the server. It also doesn't include any messages if the user tries to back up the phone to the cloud which means that on a demand from the government, Signal has nothing to hand over.
On January 13th, The Guardian published a story claiming that WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption contains a backdoor which will allow government agencies to snoop into your privacy. WhatsApp, as well as Open Whisper Systems, which provided the encryption protocol to the former, however, denied the claim.
WhatsApp has been the World's most trusted and popular messaging app, with more than 1 billion users. Google Playstore shows that Signal has been downloaded between one and five million times.