Signal 2.0.1

For close to two years, revelations regarding the NSA’s habit of treating people’s privacy as if it means nothing have been getting out into the media, thanks to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. During this time, the NSA’s efforts to undermine all types of encryption have made headlines and continue to be at the center of a huge debate about Internet security.

There are encryption standards, however, that are still safe from the intelligence agency’s reach, much to everyone’s relief. Despite protests from the NSA and other big names in Washington, tech companies have been doing their best to reassure users by adding encryption everywhere to make things harder on the NSA to break into their private conversations.

Two in one

Some services that have reached stardom during this time, thanks in big part to the fact that Edward Snowden himself praised the developer, are Text Secure and RedPhone, encryption services for text messages and phone calls. United under the name Signal for iOS, the app provides two-in-one protection for all your conversations.

The Signal app is as easy to use as any other similar tool. You only have to provide a phone number and type in the code that seeks to validate you’re not a robot. Once you get cleared, you can go on and use the app just like you would any other texting tool.

The interface is clean and intuitive, which means it’s very easy to use. There are two buttons at the bottom of the screen, allowing you to move between active conversations and those you’ve already archived. Archiving a conversation can be done by swapping your finger over it from left to right. Deleting them altogether is also possible by swiping from the other direction.

Starting a new conversation can be done by simply tapping on the plus button on the interface. There, you can look for people in your contact list and start your chat. You can type regular texts or send attachments. It’s possible to look for photos and videos on your phone, or take new ones while chatting.
Since Signal is a mix between Text Secure and RedPhone, it means that you can also use the app to safely call your friends. Group chats are also an option, so if you want to include more people into the conversation, that’s something you can do quite easily.

Keep control over your privacy

The settings area allows users to enable screen security and clear history logs. Advanced options enable users to enable a debug log. Created accounts can be destroyed with the touch of a button.

All in all, this is a pretty great tool. On top of the fact that it is very easy to use, it uses three different algorithms that have been extensively tested. The end-to-end encryption protects your messages and calls and, on top of this, protects the data on your phone by using local encryption if you have a passphrase enabled.

Add to watchlist:

SMSChat

• Strings 1.0.7
• Emoji for iOS 7 3.1
• Kik 8.1.0
• Hangouts 3.1.0
• Skype 5.11