 Tom here from Lawrence systems and just because we have to socially distance ourselves from people does not mean we have to sacrifice our privacy Say hi Brett So this is signal messenger and I'm gonna hang up and you and start a video now And I'm gonna dive into how to have truly private conversations and not worry about a lot of the other Software out there that may have causing some privacy concerns So if you want to learn more about me or my company head over to Lawrence systems calm If you'd like to hire sure project There's a hires button up at the top if you want to support this channel in other ways There's some affiliate links down below to get you deals and discounts on products and services that we talk about in his channel And I have talked about signal before it's a great tool and we'll start here at signal org speak freely Say hello to a different messaging experience in an unexpected focus on privacy combined with all the features you'd expect now Signals free, but let's cover this real quick. It's a foundation. That's why it's free They're not free because they're monetizing your existence and selling your data to some third parties They're not taking vc money that's influencing them to try to monetize and etc. Or etc. The usual pitfalls you find with a lot of different Uh programs out there that are free. They're free because you're the product I would we've certainly all heard that before and it's true in many many cases It is a very full featured system. So security without insecurity It's a messaging platform. So easy to message easy to say whatever you want You can share voice text message photo Animated gift signal uses your phone's data connection So you can have your avoid sms and mms fees, which some carriers still charge for Speak freely make crystal clear voice and video calls of people Live across town or across the ocean with no long distance charges Yeah, you know pretty basic stuff because you're not actually using your phone number years using the data plan So this uses data not actual like normal sell your voice And make privacy slick at a new layer of expression of conversation with encrypted stickers I think they took the time to encrypt the stickers think about that Which I think is pretty cool get together with groups group chats make it easy to stay connected with your family and friends and co workers No ads no trackers. No kidding. There are no ads no affiliate marketers and no creepy tracking for signals So focus on sharing your moments that matter with people That matter to you and this is one of the things that I think is really important is we do not have to sacrifice privacy Just to have a private conversation online. So I've been working in the online space for years This is something I think a lot about in signal messenger being one of my go-to's now the good and bad of signal messenger Is it uses your phone number? Why do I say good and bad good? It's really easy It's easy for to take non-technical people get them to sign up for signal They it sends them an sms message I can now instantly have a private conversation when they have signal loaded I have seen a loaded we already have a common thing we knew about each other Which is the phone number The bad thing is if I want to have a private conversation with a stranger And I don't want to give him my phone number specifically my cell phone number Well, that creates a challenge with signal. So I don't see this as the you know The worst problem they have because it makes an easy way to do identity management But you know it it's a sacrifice to be able to have to Do that So, you know, if you got to give someone your phone number to have a conversation with them I don't think it's the most terrible thing But obviously there are people and people who just want to have an encrypted conversation with me There are other methods There's a pgp key on my website for those of you that really want to send me an encrypted message And some people have used that I do offer that as an option But that's obviously much more technical than having my friends and relatives I've told to the signal legal this was easy now What about if someone clones the phone? What if you cloned my phone wouldn't they be able to get to my signal because there's no username No password no registration other than verifying that you own the phone number Well, that's where signals already thought of a lot of these And what they do is they offer a system by which if my phone gets cloned or changed It will automatically notify everyone a signal that my safety number has changed as in Because my safety number changed they will know that another phone another device was added and can be notified of that So that's an important piece that signal has is they do have mitigations against that now as far as the protocol itself The entire thing is open source and if you understand cryptography you can read through all the source code the cryptography the entire methodologies It's 100 published. It's been audited by other cryptographers Not just moxie marlin spike who came up with all this But they have an entire breakdown of every little piece of how it works So it's completely been well vetted and if you don't Believe those who have vetted it you can vet it yourself if you understand cryptography It's a lot of reading but they are 100 open source and do everything in the clear So it's one of the tools I think is really handy to People to use it's really handy for the average users that want to you know Because pretty much everyone has a cell phone these days you want to have an easy encrypted private conversation Signals a great way to go now the last thing i'm going to cover is it's not a replacement for a video conferencing app You do not have group conferencing. It is a group chat app But it's not a group conferencing app so you can build a group you can have a group of people You exchange messages with but there's not a way to call and conference all those people at this time I'm not positive that'll be a future um Feature or not But from a standpoint of being able to directly call someone and make a private completely encrypted phone call works great From the standpoint of being able to have a one-on-one video chat with someone 100 private and encrypted Works perfectly good for that. So those two features make it very ideal and it's very easy to use Like I said, there's no more than just have a cell phone whether it's ios or android Yeah, it works on both platforms And you can start having a private conversation with someone granted It is going to use your data plan, but it also will work over wi-fi and things like that Now they do also have the desktop app Which does not support any type of the videos or phone calling But it allows you to keep continuing the conversation from your desktop Whether it be windows mac or linux and carry on with that conversation I'll leave a previous review. I did a signal down below If you are interested in diving a little more into it I've covered things a little bit more in depth. I think in the other video, but I just want to throw it out there It's one of the easy tools to recommend. It's free, but don't worry. It's not free as in Charge is monetizing your existence Just a great application to use if you want to have a private conversation And with everyone kind of being on lockdown here in april of 2020 Don't need I just want to remind people you don't need to sacrifice your privacy to have your private conversation. 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