Just a few years back, instant messaging application, Signal, was little known in the social media realm. In January this year, the app recorded unprecedented growth from 20 million users as of December 2020, to a whopping 40 million.

Signal App, recommended as the most secure messaging app for activists, has been downloaded more than 105 million times from Google Play and App Store after WhatsApp, the largest messaging company with 2 billion active monthly users globally said in its new Terms of Service that it would share data with parent company Facebook.

The growth of Signal, also fuelled by SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, is not going down well with authoritarian governments around the world. When the app became a hot cake in Iran early January, it was banned by the Iraqi government for allegedly “promoting dissent.”

In India, the government banned WhatsApp amid the historic famer protests, which coincided with the social media app’s controversial Terms of Service.

The Narendra Modi administration has gone in search of a better messaging alternative with data security in mind. But they cannot recommend Signal to citizens. Instead, Indian government officials now use Sandes, a messaging app that has almost as same features and functionality as WhatsApp.

So, despite why are governments around the world reluctant to embrace Signal despite its secure messaging features?

Activist-focused

In June 2020, Signal introduced a feature that allows users to blur people’s facial appearance while among crowds. It was followed by an initiative in which Signal Foundation announced the distribution of facemasks to protesters “to help support everyone self-organizing for change in the streets.”

Asked whether Signal was an outright activist organization in an interview with the Time in September 2020, Brian Acton, Signal Foundation’s co-founder and Executive Chairman who also co-founded WhatsApp, said their mission remains protection of data privacy.

“I don’t know if I would say more. I would say that right now it’s congruent. It’s a continuation of our ongoing mission to protect privacy,” Acton was quoted to have said.  

Uncompromising on data-sharing policy

Unlike WhatsApp which states on its website that it does not store logs of who is messaging who “in the ordinary course of providing service” yet it has the technical ability to share such data, Signal does not comply with authorities even if it is willing to do so.

In the early second half of 2020, Signal’s founder and CEO Moxie Marlinspike tweeted the acronym “ACAB”, which means All Cops Are Bastards.

Cryptographic feature

Like WhatsApp, Signal uses cryptography to make sure that messages, images, and video files they carry are only visible to the sender and the recipient – not third parties like governments, spies, or the designer of the app.

Though messages across both WhatsApp and Signal are secured with End-to-End encryption, one thing sets Signal apart. On Signal, messages’ metadata are encrypted, meaning that even authority with a warrant cannot obtain users’ address book, nor see who a user is communicating to, nor see the messages being communicated.

Before Signal became popular, it was overlooked as a powerful tool for activists. As the app’s user base grows, governments around the world fret over the preference of the app, especially among activists.