Many were outraged by how WhatsApp changed its privacy policy, forcing everyone to agree that their data would be transferred to Facebook. Among the outraged was Musk, who made a specific recommendation – to switch to the secure Signal messenger.

Musk’s tweet was shared by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. After that, a large stream of new users poured into the Signal application. In this regard, the Signal developers announced on Twitter about interruptions in sending verification codes for authorization. However, the developers are already solving this problem.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time that Elon Musk has criticized Facebook. Previously, he led a public dispute with a social network about the principles of processing personal data of its users. As a result, in 2018, he removed his personal page from Facebook, as well as the communities of his companies – Tesla and SpaceX.

The signal is a messenger that uses end-to-end encryption in all dialogues. Therefore, all messages that are sent and received by chat participants at the very beginning are encrypted with a special key and then decrypted directly on the recipient’s device. So the company does not process messages and sent content on its servers. Even in Telegram, end-to-end encryption is used only in special “secret chats”, in other cases it is decrypted remotely on the application server. Signal also lacks ads and has features such as a message self-destruct timer, protection against previewing when switching applications, and asking for a password when idle.

Here are some more Signal features:

• relaying calls through Signal servers to protect the IP address;
• displaying calls outside the messenger, for example, in the standard “Phone” application;
• changing the pin code, setting up a reminder about the need to change it;
• PIN-code request when re-registering with Signal;
• blocking the messenger using a pin code, Face ID or Touch ID;
• screen protection: the content of the messenger is not displayed in the multitasking menu;
• permission to correspond with subscribers who are not in the contact list;
• clearing chat history.

Recently, Skype published a  post on its official Twitter stating that the developers of this messenger do not store or process their users’ confidential information.