Signal users on Android will lose one of the encrypted messaging app’s major features

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. In a new blog post, the company said that it would be removing support for text messages, otherwise known as SMS “We continued supporting the sending and receiving of plaintext SMS messages via the Signal interface on Android … because we knew that Signal would be easier for people to use if it could serve as a homebase for most of the messages they were sending or receiving, without having to convince the people they wanted to talk to to switch to Signal first”, Nina Berman, a writer for the messaging app, wrote. “But this came with a tradeoff: it meant that some messages sent and received via the Signal interface on Android were not protected by Signal’s strong privacy guarantees.” Signal now claims that it “no longer makes sense” to support SMS because plaintext messages are insecure, and in some parts of the world companies put a high cost on sending SMS messages. The company also adds that supporting both Signal messages and SMS messages is a poor user experience, and it is “important that people don’t mistake SMS messages sent or received via the Signal interface”. I’m actually gutted.” Another said that the SMS functionality allowed them to “install the app on a non technical user’s phone and they would get the benefits of Signal opportunistically.