Signal is the privacy-focused smartphone messaging app that everyone seems to be using. You can also use Signal on a Windows, Mac or Linux computer. It’s easy to install and register in your Signal account.
Privacy by design
Signal is published by the Signal Foundation and Signal Messenger LLC. These two nonprofits – in Mountain View, California – were founded by Matthew Rosenfeld (also known as ‘Moxie Marlinspike’) and Brian Acton. Together, they continue the work begun at Open Whisper Systems, one of Rosenfeld’s former ventures.
The Signal application is free and open source. Anyone can review the source code. The source code of the Signal Messenging Protocol (SMP) has been reviewed by a joint team of the German CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, the Swiss ETH Zurich University, Cisco and the Canadian University of Waterloo. They declared the code clean, the motifs pure and the coding rock solid. Signal is definitely safe.
But there is a difference between security and privacy.
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The difference between privacy and security
Privacy is about controlling your information and data, choosing who has access to it, and deciding what they can do with it. Security is one of the techniques you can use to maintain your privacy.
The security offered by the SMP is so strong that other applications like WhatsApp have adopted the Signal protocol to provide end-to-end encryption for their own products. But although WhatsApp may be safe As for the transmission of your messages, it does not speak one privacy worries. Protecting the protocol is completely unrelated to WhatsApp’s data harvesting policy and data sharing policy. These are the activities that affect your privacy, and this is the story that made WhatsApp fall into the public eye and the worst PR storm of its 11-year history.
WhatsApp harvest and log data about you and you use their app. The company stores this data – including your contact list, with whom you contacted, the details of purchases you made through the app and your location when you use the app – on their servers. Although the delivery of your messages is secure, WhatsApp keeps a lot of private data about you. And WhatsApp is owned by Facebook.
On the other hand, Signal holds you in virtually nothing. It saves the smartphone number you registered with when you signed in to use Signal and when you last used the service. That’s it. A telephone number and two time stamps. So, even if they are hit with a subpoena, that is all they can hand over to the authorities. Nothing about your messages, your location or anything else.
Signaling starts to make a lot of sense when you scratch the surface of how your data is often used as a commodity by other companies.
Install Signal on Linux
There’s only one way to sign up for Signal, and that is through your smartphone. It works on Android phones and iPhones. So if you have not installed Signal on your smartphone, do so first. It must work on your smartphone before you can use it on your computer.
Signal is available in the repositories for some Linux distributions. It is also available as a flat pack and a snap. We are installing the snap on Ubuntu.
sudo snap install signal-desktop
You can also use the snap on Fedora, but to cover all bases, we will demonstrate that you install the flat pack.
sudo flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.signal.Signal.flatpakref
On Manjaro you can install it directly from pacman.
sudo pacman -Sy signal-desktop
Start signal on the desktop
Press the “Super” key on your keyboard. It is usually between the “Control” and “Alt” at the bottom left of the keyboard. Type “signal” in the search bar. You will see the Signal icon.
Click on the icon to start Signal.
Before you can use Signal on your computer, you need to connect it to the Signal app on your smartphone. The desktop client displays a QR code. You need to scan this code with your smartphone in the Signal app. (The QR code in the screenshot below is not a true signal QR code.)
Below the QR code are brief instructions for Android phones and iPhones.
Open the Signal app on your smartphone and tap the menu button.
Tap the “Settings” entry in the menu.
Tap the “Connected devices” option.
You will see a list of the devices you have already linked to this Signal account.
Tap the blue “+” button to add a new device.
The Signal QR code scanner appears.
Scan the QR code in the desktop client. Once the QR code has been read and decoded, you will be asked if you are sure you want to connect the device to your Signal account.
Tap on the blue text “Pair device”. On the desktop client, you are asked to name the device.
Click the “Finish Linking Phone” button when you have entered the name after which you need to name the customer. This is the name listed in the list of “Connected Devices” on your smartphone. It does not affect your identity within Signal.
Signal will sync your contacts and message groups from your smartphone. Note that it is not pulled by existing chats and messages. Only messages that appear after the desktop client is linked to your signal account will appear in the client.
When done, it will be displayed in the main client window. If you prefer dark mode, click File> Preferences> Dark.
Signal is now ready to send private and secure messages directly from your computer.
Disconnect the desktop client
If you wish, you can remove the desktop from your Signal account. You can do this from your smartphone or from the desktop.
From your smartphone, tap the menu button> Settings> Paired devices, and then tap the paired device you want to uninstall. Tap “OK” in the small pop-up window.
If you would rather break the link from the desktop client, click File> Preferences> Data Cleanup.
Security and privacy from the desktop
Messaging apps are great. But if you are sitting at a computer, it may be more convenient to have the app on your desktop so that you can not switch back and forth between your computer and your smartphone.
Now you can enjoy the security and guaranteed privacy of Signal and a real keyboard.