Reddit: “Question – I’m new to the whole taking private seriously thing, so feel free to explain it like I’m 5. I know that’s Signal seem to gold standard for private secure messaging. But how wide is the gap between it and iMessage? What are the key differences? Also this is purely for my knowledge since I doubt I’d be able to take my wife, friends or family to download a new app just to text me. All of Signal’s code is public on GitHub:

• Android – https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android
• iOS – https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS
• Desktop – https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop
• Server – https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server
• Everything on Signal is end-to-end encrypted by default. Signal cannot provide any usable data to law enforcement when under subpoena: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
• You can hide your phone number and create a username on Signal: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/6829998083994-Phone-Number-Privacy-and-Usernames-Deeper-Dive
• Signal has built in protection when you receive messages from unknown numbers. You can block or delete the message without the sender ever knowing the message went through. Google Messages, WhatsApp, and iMessage have no such protection: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007459591-Signal-Profiles-and-Message-Requests
• Signal is a 501(c)3 charity with a Form-990 IRS document disclosed every year: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/824506840
• Signal does not have a record of who you’re texting , what you’re talking about , phone calls, messages, videos, photos, etc. it doesn’t have any records of that because it doesn’t store any of your data.
• On the other hand , iMessage while it is private as in encryption, it has data about who you texted from what number to what number , phone calls , etc. it will only have the data about what number texted who , how long , from what time , etc and the same with phone calls and FaceTimes , it’ll only have the time stamps and who called who, but it won’t have the contents of the conversation, text messages, and or video calls. But take that with a grain of salt because data extraction tools have been able to recover iMessages and other deleted data.//”