Via Matthew Haughey – AWLN – “A friend of mine works in the federal government and wrote a guide for their fellow federal workers on how to use Signal. There are lots of good reasons for switching to Signal for messaging, and this does a great job of laying it all out. This friend doesn’t currently have a blog, so they asked me to post it for them, and I obliged since I think it’s a straightforward introduction to protecting your personal communication.”

“As a federal civilian with some technical know-how, I wanted to share with my fellow colleagues the importance of moving to Signal for messages instead of using other tools like iMessage. There are a few simple reasons why, so we’ll outline them here, and explain how we can all make the switch together. This is a good, concrete step we can all take to keep each other safe. (Some of you who are geeks will know there are other technical systems like RCS, but those are still very complicated and not really ready even for nerds, so we’re going to skip those for now.) Signal is a free app that lets you securely communicate with anyone, run by a trusted non-profit that has had an excellent track record since 2018 Credible technology and security experts around the world have looked at the code behind the app to ensure it works as promised. You can get it on any of your phones or devices. Once it’s set up, it works just like familiar messaging apps — you can send text or images, emojis or memes, videos or voice messages, group chats and calls, and all the usual stuff. Signal messages are always end-to-end encrypted between your device and the recipient’s device Think of end-to-end encrypted messages as written in code, with a key to the code that no one — not even Signal — can access. With iMessage, if the iMessage service isn’t working (like when you send a “green bubble” message to an SMS user or if the iMessage service is down), your message is completely unencrypted. This means that your messages are stored in plain text on the participating devices, and any interested party could easily read your messages. Examples of when this could happen include the government seeking a warrant for your messages or obtaining a wiretap, or someone gaining access to the network (among others). Plus, if anyone in an iMessage conversation is using iCloud to back up their iMessage messages (which millions of people do), then Apple has a copy of those messages which it can give up if required…”