WhatsApp’s privacy policy has triggered major concerns among users
about how crows WhatsApp and its owner Facebook will be using user data for
ads. This has made a lot of WhatsApp users switch to Signal messenger.
Signal gained a lot of praise of late after it came to the forefront
that it collects almost no personal details compared to Facebook-owned
WhatsApp. Having said that there are few hidden settings in Signal which
enables more privacy and makes it almost difficult for third parties to
track messages at all. Here are 11 things you can do on Signal to make
your chats secured entirely. While some of the features are there on
WhatsApp as well it is not as effective.
Register on Signal using a virtual phone number :-
Signal doesn’t track your contact book or links your phone number to
create your digital profile. Of course, it requires a phone number for
initial registration, but the good news is that you can use a virtual
phone number to verify the OTP. Use any virtual phone number app like
TextNow to register on Signal and then enable a PIN to take control of
your account.
Don’t use a display picture and don’t use your real name :-
While signing up on Signal, don’t put your own photo as a display
picture and don’t use your real name to get the utmost privacy. You can
do the same on WhatsApp too but the fact that you have been using
WhatsApp for so long, the metadata is already stored and linked to your
digital profile. So, even if you decide to suddenly change your name and
photo it would be less effective.
Enable PIN and Registration lock under Privacy settings :-
Your Signal account is not linked to your phone number. The beauty of
using Signal is that the account is linked to a PIN that only you are
aware of. This makes tracking users difficult. For added security, go to
Privacy settings and turn on ‘Registration lock’. This prevents
unauthorised access to your Signal from a different device.
Disable ‘Use system contact photos’ option under Appearance :-
Go to ‘Use system contact photos’ option under Appearance Settings
and disable it. This will prevent your default contact book pictures
from showing on Signal.
Disable Read receipts and enable ‘Always Relay Calls’ :-
Under Privacy settings, disable Read receipts and turn on ‘Always
Relay Calls’ option to prevent revealing your IP address to your
contact. Turning off Read receipts simply eliminates unwanted metadata
information.
Disable ‘Show Calls in Recents’ :-
If you are an iPhone user, go to Privacy settings and disable ‘Show
calls in Recent’. This will prevent all Signal voice and video calls
from showing up on call history.
Set ‘Screen timeout’ to 1 minute :-
To prevent unwanted chat access, set ‘Screen timeout’ to the minimum
of 1 minute, so that your Signal app gets locked to prevent unwanted
access to other people.
Disable ‘Allow from Anyone’ :-
Go to Privacy settings and disable ‘Allow from Anyone’ option. This will prevent unknown people from contacting you on Signal.
Disable ‘Debug Log’ :-
Go to Advanced settings and disable Debug log for extra privacy. Verify safety number of each contacts that you add on Signal. Be sure to verify each and every contact on Signal before you start chatting with them on Signal.
Enable disappearing messages and set to the minimum of 5 seconds or 10 seconds :-
The disappearing messages feature works way better on Signal compared
to WhatsApp. Even if one party has enabled this option the other party
is forced to follow it. This makes it effective and you can set
disappearing messages to a minimum of 5 seconds. This simply deletes the
message after you have seen it for 5 seconds.
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