I’m pleased with Signal. More importantly, my son who works in the digit security business and much more concerned about hacking uses it.
w/r,
David
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And I see in that article that Elon Musk recommends Signal! 
My problems with Facebook messenger are that I got kicked out of Facebook 5 times and lost my Facebook messenger connection each time because of it. Because I knew somebody who worked at Facebook I finally got it resolved. I think it’s OK now, but I distrust Facebook.
When I got kicked out of Facebook. I did not get kicked off of WhatsApp though.
And one more thing: in order to have the highest level of security for Apple Messages, make sure iCloud Advanced Data Protection is turned on. Otherwise, Apple can use the encryption key for your messages—only for data “recovery” purposes supposedly—when iCloud Backup is enabled.
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Mr. Lerner,
I’m no tech expert but several people I believe are, recommend Signal, and I have found it to be more reliable than Messages and usable with other OS users.
What bothered me was:
- on the installation process years ago the wording made it seem like giving access to your Contacts was required, but it turned out not to be. Maybe it’s changed now for more transparency. One friend I know refused to use it for this reason;
- I had it installed on an iPad and also saw that it was deactivated by Signal or whatever they called it. I contacted them about that and it appeared if the app wasn’t used for ‘some (unspecified) time’ it would be unusable; which is, um, actually not a point about safety, sorry!;
- I have checked a couple of times and not found any way to archive the texts if you want, for instance, if you change phones or have to reset it from scratch for some reason, all your Signal chats and media are gone. That’s not really a safety point either but maybe a usability point. Sorry about the offtopicism.
Business users may have to use apps they find dodgy/unsafe, if their work colleagues/customers use them.
If that is turned on does that mean you cannot restore from iCloud backup if needed?
There is a feature to change your phone number. But I don’t know if that preserves the chat data or not.
Also, since you can link devices (iPad, Mac) wouldn’t the data be there as well?
No, you absolutely can restore from iCloud Backup.
But it does mean that you are responsible for access to your Apple Account. Without Advanced Data Protection, Apple can help with data recovery because they have keys to your account. In order to set up Advanced Data Protection, you need to choose either a Recovery Contact or set a Recovery Key - it would be your responsibility to keep that key and obviously protect it. Once you turn it on, Apple no longer has keys to your account and cannot help you if you forget your password, etc.
I do have ADP turned on.
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No, you still can back up from iCloud just fine but you need to do so from one of your own trusted Apple devices and using your passcode. I do this myself. Works just fine.
It means Apple no longer has a key to your backup (thus making it more secure), but at the expense of losing the Apple safety net: if you were to lose access to your iDevice(s) or forget your password(s), they cannot restore access for you.
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Mr. Lerner, indeed I think you are right, but the chat history is still trapped within the app and a device, you can’t simply export or print to pdf or save it as text or a database or print it in case some day Signal app goes away or one stops using chat apps, or you don’t update the app (neglect to update and it’s all locked up).
In Signal I try to remember to download the photos/attachments right away so at least I have those.
But, oh I have to eat my digits! I just opened a Signal chat with one of the contacts and tried ⌘ A and nothing happened. Looked in the menus and clicked back in the chat again, command-a’d and everything was selected. Copied and pasted into Text Edit and there it is, text and emojis and times but no images or names of contact. So if I remind myself to occasionally select all/copy/paste into TextEdit I would have a sorta kind future proofish archive in combination with saved attachments.
(Messages saves some steps btw, select a stretch of text/photos, control-click and Services > New TextEdit Doc with Selection and there you have it with text, photos, and times/contact info).
What is the safety angle on this comment? Ah, well, safety as in having backups/archives, and possibly that the reason Signal doesn’t have a mechanism for this is its origins (as I recall) and some contemporary use cases in which hiding ones tracks and messages disappearing is a feature, could be part of it.
I am still old school regarding wanting to document my life and locally back things up in future-proofish ways. I still have full file cabinets in the basement with paper documents from decades ago! Do I ever go and look at paper or digital archives? hardly ever but knowing I can (and I have done a few times this Autumn) is a good feeling. Apologies for offtopicism there 
It seems that Signal chats are not synced across linked devices. On my iPad it says, “for your security, chat history isn’t transferred to new linked devices.”
Today there apparently were outages at Facebook, including Facebook Messenger and Instagram. It seems to be working again, but I was thinking about best ways to contact friends in that case.
I guess I should just send them all a FaceBook Messenger text in the meantime requesting to exchange contact info like phone numbers and email addresses.
By the way, I wanted to test WhatsApp on my iPad and couldn’t find an app for it!
Messages is easiest to use, but again, only if the other parties are also using Apple devices.
LINE has group chats too. We use it in my neighborhood. But people outside of Japan tend not to be interested in it. And I’m not sure about encryption. And it’s a little complicated to use on devices other than your registered smartphone. But it’s cross platform.
Once you have your iPhone, iPad, and/or Mac all active and logged in to the same Signal account, any and all messages generated from that point WILL appear on all your devices (within the Signal app, of course). Just make sure you open Signal at least once a month on each device so they all stay registered.
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Mr. Lerner, same in my experience as Mr. D.
Always good to have multiple contact methods for cases like outages!
I’ve also experienced the loss of messages when changing to a new device.
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