I use signal as my instant messenger app on my ‘phone and I have the desktop version installed on my, well, desktop. Signal was written by the kind of people I trust and in my view it is infinitely better than plain unencrypted SMS and much better than any of the alternative IMs around (whatsapp, telegram, imessage, google messages et al.) Like most modern messaging apps, signal gives you one to one messaging, group messaging, video calling and image messaging, and it does it privately and securely. What more could a privacy nut want?
A couple of days ago my old friend Rob sent me a signal message reminding me (yet again) that I had failed to make any comment on trivia’s birthday. In fact, during 2022 I have made the sum total of three (four if you count this one) posts. My bad. All I can say is that I have been busy. As I told Rob in my initial reply I have a bunch of things I want to post about, but right now, none of them are so particularly pressing that I feel the need to hit the keyboard. Because we don’t correspond that frequently, my conversation with Rob strayed off onto a variety of topics (motorcycles, computer backup strategies, the ever expanding usage of consultants in Government for example). Now, at the time I was conversing with Rob, I was also in the middle of a separate thread with my old chums from the bike club, also on signal. But the conversation with Rob was on my desktop whilst the one with the bike club was on my ‘phone. I think you can guess what happened next.
Yep, I posted a note to Rob that should have gone to the bike club. Fortunately Rob agreed with the contents of my inadvertant post, but it could have gone horribly wrong.
As Rob said, the biggest failure in any secure system is the human element. All the security in the world can’t help you if you are an idiot.
A (belated) Merry Christmas to my readers and a Happy New Year. May 2023 bring you all that you could wish for.