Encrypted messenger run by the non-profit Signal Foundation.
About Signal
Signal is an encrypted messenger developed by the Signal Foundation, a US non-profit established in 2018 with a 50-million-dollar donation from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, who had left Meta over disagreements about data practices. The app's roots go back to TextSecure, released in 2010.
Signal's end-to-end encryption protocol is considered the gold standard of the industry and has been adopted by WhatsApp, Google Messages and others. The project collects almost no metadata — it cannot say who you talk to or which groups you belong to — and the entire client and server code is open source.
Because it is funded by donations rather than advertising, Signal has no commercial incentive to harvest data. The main reservations are practical: a phone number is still required to register, and the foundation is incorporated in the United States, which some privacy advocates consider a jurisdictional weakness.
What critics say
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9.4/10
The Verge
Tom Warren
“The most trusted name in private messaging.”
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9/10
Wired
Andy Greenberg
“Still the encrypted messenger the experts recommend.”
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Editors' Choice
PCMag
Max Eddy
“Editors' Choice for secure chat.”
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8.8/10
TechCrunch
Zack Whittaker
“Nonprofit, open source, and genuinely pleasant to use.”
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4/5
CNET
Rae Hodge
“Easy enough for your whole family.”
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