Hey Folks! Someone in my family (Person A), has talked to a guy, who is working in the tech world, about if it make sense to use Signal, over Messenger, Snap, WhatsApp, with privacy in mind. The tech guy said, there is no difference, and that its not making sense to use it and that its almost the same. I know Signal is discussed alot here, but im now looking for some arguments, and facts to tell the one from my family, that the tech guy is wrong. What arguments can i use, why is Signal better in privacy, then the other alternatives? Person A, has always been sceptical about me beeing so privacy minded, and A thinks that there is nothing to do to protect, and is one of thoese saying : I have nothing to hide.
Edit: thank you for the help
That’s so true. I thought so too, but Person A I a hard but to crack 😀
With that in mind, security and privacy are two completely different things.
For instance, I would say that WhatsApp is fairly secure. It just isn’t private at all. Meta can (and does) see and track your meta data.
Why is that important? I liked these 2 examples I read somewhere because they are simple but explain how powerful it is. Your phone calls are private. Your carrier isn’t allowed to listen in on your call to know what you talk about. But they can see that you called a suicide hotline while standing on a bridge. They can see that your doctor’s office called you and then you called an abortion clinic next. The following week your GPS location went to that clinic. Are these things Person A would willingly tell their phone provider? It’s none of their business so I assume not. But they essentially are when they don’t care about their privacy.
Another stance I take is that even if they don’t care about their privacy, can they at least respect mine? I don’t give their phone number out to anybody that asks. But non private apps look at all their contacts so they are doing exactly that to me. Think of the last spam call they got. If they knew it was because of you wouldn’t they be upset?