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Why I am switching from Whatsapp to Signal, and you should too.

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Signal

Whatsapp is part of my daily life and probably many of others globally. Recently on 04-Jan-2021 Whatsapp updated its privacy policy which now focuses more on sharing the data with it’s parent company Facebook.

Also the Tesla CEO Elon Musk twitted to Use Signal app for messaging.

This surges the downloads of Signal app in playstore and currently topping the chart.

You may have heard about this app for the first time and must be asking what is this Signal app. It’s a messaging app but unlike whatsapp it’s primary focus is on providing privacy and security to it’s users.

Signal is not a new app that got recently launced infact this app is around for quite sometime. It was first released in 2014.

  • It’s a cross-platform app which means its availabel on both Android and iOS.
  • It’s end-to-end encrypted similar to whatsapp but Signal doesn’t share your data to Facebook.
  • Users can use Signal to send messages, images, videos.
  • Users can make audio and video calls.
  • You can also make group video calls (150 members).
  • Signal also has a disappearing messages feature.

So the Signal has all the features that I needed and were using in Whatsapp. But the best thing about it is it’s focus on providing users the end-to-end encryption and also collecting minimal user data from the user, plus it has all the feature.

So far so good but there are few disadvantages also

Whatsapp lets you backup you data (chats, images etc) to Google drive and you can restore them in case if you reinstall or change your device.

But with Signal, its store all the data locally in your phone, so if you change your device or lost it or cleared data you will not be able to restore your data.

Thanks for reading. If you have some feedback, please provide your response or reach out to me on Twitter or Github.

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