Still, Signal’s cutting-edge cryptography and the robust nature of its open-source development have earned Malkin’s approval: “I’d recommend Signal, and I use it myself.” Which isn’t to say that its tech prevents all conceivable attacks, especially ones aided by government budgets. “The government can issue other attacks which circumvent the cryptography, such as zero-day exploits, although such attacks require much effort and are expensive,” Malkin noted. Moreover, the cryptographic algorithms used for encryption are ones that we believe even the government cannot break,” said Tal Malkin, director of the Cryptography Laboratory at Columbia University and recent chair of the Center for Cybersecurity, part of Columbia’s Data Science Institute. “The protocol uses state-of-the-art cryptographic algorithms, relying on very good cryptographic assumptions, and has been scrutinized by many experts. As Western governments pressure tech companies to create encryption-circumventing backdoors that grant law enforcement access to user calls and message data, OWS has remained steadfast in their pledge to collect as little data as possible and has designed Signal’s network to follow that ideal, keeping information safe in transit and only storing data locally on a user’s device.

Plus, those companies have a commercial incentive to collect and sell data. The company behind the secure messenger, Open Whisper Systems (OWS), has shared the encryption tech behind Signal with other messaging services, including those made by Facebook and Google, but many of them still don’t implement end-to-end encryption in all chat options. Heck, even Edward Snowden has recommended it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation includes guides for using Signal on its Surveillance Self-Defense tools page, and The Intercept, the publication cofounded by Glenn Greenwald, recommended it in a video. The tech community has been recommending Signal as a secure messenger for years. OWS has remained steadfast in their pledge to collect as little data as possible and has designed Signal’s network to follow that ideal.

Signal app safe