Does anyone know if the encryption of this app is really as good as advertised? (it has been championed by Snowden, not that that necessarily means anything...)

I am wary of anything that makes the claims I have heard about it, but I am curious and have a number of friends who use it.

Cheers,

JBArk

Yes.

Is that an encrypted box that contains a hidden, longer, folded answer?

JBArk

No.

Understood.

Alright alright I'm sick today and didn't want to expend the energy, but here you go.

It's not perfect, mostly because of metadata concerns (the encryption itself is top notch), and there are alternatives that are even better in terms of anonymity, but no normal person would likely use them.

You could sum it up as this: The contents of your conversations will be secure while transmitted over the internet, but the server knows how often and to whom you speak to, and also where you are (physically) as long as you have network connectivity.

Put another way, your contact list and contact frequency is revealed to the server, altough the contents of the communications remain secure (private).



You can improve on the physical tracking part of the situation by proxying Signal through Orbot (Tor client) on Android - not sure if calls work like this, messages surely do.

LibreSignal, a FOSS fork that enabled non-GCM users to talk to normal Signal users, also contained several patches that at least enabled you to filter which contacts are sent to the server, not sure if that's there with the latest Signal version.



tl;dr: for most people this is the best private messenging app available atm

I wasn't pushing you to expand, but thanks - very helpful. You know your stuff, that's for sure. This inspires confidence.

Now rest up and get better!

JBArk

Is chat secure better? I know the devs moved on but it seems good.