From what was once a ‘safe’ app now turns out to be a ‘potential threat’, as Elon Musk criticises ‘Signal’ which he once praised for its ‘user-privacy protections’ features.
Elon Musk, who earlier supported Signal for its user privacy protections, now seems to have changed his statement. Musk who once had faith in ‘Signal’ now criticises the app and its leadership.
Furthermore, Musk said that there are unspecified “known vulnerabilities” within ‘Signal’ that were not addressed by the company’s leadership.
Why the defame?
Signal faced a backlash from Pavel Durov, CEO of rival app Telegram, who criticised Signal’s encryption capabilities in a public post on his own platform, saying, “the US government spent $3 million to build Signal’s encryption.”. Durov also accused Signal of being an insecure choice for private messaging.
“An alarming number of important people I’ve spoken to remarked that their ‘private’ Signal messages had been exploited against them in US courts or media,” Durov said.
As reported by Business Insider, the US government has been found to have used encrypted devices to spy on clients. However, no evidence has been found that Signal, which is a non-profit company operating with open-source code, has ties to the US government.
Is ‘Signal’ really safe?
Conservative activist Christopher Rufo argued that Signal should be cautious of its trustworthiness. However, he had no evidence that Katherine Maher, the chair of the board of directors on Signal, has altered any of Signal’s encryption technology nor changed the organisation’s mission after joining the board.
On Monday, Meredith Whittaker supported Signal’s security as questions were raised over the platform’s new chairman’s political ideology. She defended the platform’s integrity. She explained that no one can change the app’s transparency policy.
“We use cryptography to keep data out of the hands of everyone but those it’s meant for (this includes protecting it from us). The Signal Protocol is the gold standard in the industry for a reason–it’s been hammered and attacked for over a decade, and it continues to stand the test of time,” Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, concluded.
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