The Big Tech Show: Signal’s boss on why WhatsApp can’t be trusted

Would you move to a ‘secure’ and ‘private’ messaging app such as Signal?

Or does the hassle of moving your friend groups and existing conversations outweigh the benefits you hear associated with it?

It’s a question that resurfaces every time there’s a scandal over a data breach, or a change in privacy conditions from the big tech company whose service you use when fears of your personal details being used for ads somewhere else online are resurrected.

And when they do, the messaging app Signal is one of the first to be suggested as an alternative. It offers a fully-encrypted service and doesn’t make money from any kind of advertising or ‘customer monetisation’. Instead, it relies on donations from users and large benefactors.

The app now offers features like group messaging and even (just launched) Stories, as seen on other social media apps.

Is all of this enough to make you consider switching to it and leaving WhatsApp or iMessage behind? And is absolute privacy always a good thing, would people abandon WhatsApp or iMessage in favour of it and can it sometimes help criminals?

On this week’s Big Tech Show, Adrian Weckler is joined by CEO of Signal, Meredith Whittaker.