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Totally ignored Signal though?



Yeah, I thought the post was already too long to also talk about Signal!

My opinion on Signal is it should definitely be preferred if one cares about security more than usability. I really cannot wait for it to have a "standalone" client (that is, that does not require the phone to be online as well).

There are other messaging apps, like Element (and the now defunct Keybase) which try to solve the same problems. So, I decided to keep that discussion for another future article (maybe).


>(that is, that does not require the phone to be online as well).

Signal does not require the phone to be online as well. Source: just switched my phone off and still able to send and receive messages on the desktop app. WhatsApp, however, still very much requires the phone to be online for its web/desktop clients to work.

That said, Signal is still not a "standalone" app on desktop because it needs me to have installed and set up the app on my phone to link it to desktop. After this though, they are very much independent clients.


Thanks for this clarification. I guess I had a wrong assumption about Signal then!

What happened to me is that I lost my phone, so I did not have an Android device to re-install Signal. I later managed to get back the SIM card and I assumed that I could use the Desktop client, but if I remember correctly it did not work. However, I will check again all of this


Yup, the desktop app is definitely more powerful than what WhatsApp Web does.


No, it mentioned that Signal is more secure but less usable. They didn't seem to have any qualms with it. It seems to me the thesis here was basically comparing the tradeoffs that Telegram and WhatsApp made for usability, it seemed to imply that Signal didn't make any of these (I don't think it did).




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