Mr. Larson said that by some estimates, with the default encryption scheme
that Apple uses, “you’d have to have a supercomputer crunching day and night for years to be able to unlock a single computer.”
He said the best way to destroy data was not to delete it,
because it could potentially be resurrected from a hard drive, but to encode it in “a secure form of cryptography.”
Signal is one of the most popular apps for those who want to protect their text messages.
“When I use the term ‘attacker’ I mean anyone trying to access your data whom you haven’t given
express permission to,” he wrote, “whether it’s a hacker, a corporation or even a government.”
In an interview, Mr. Larson walked us through some of the basic steps he recommended.
Mr. Larson recommends password managers, which help store many passwords, with one master password.
“Going incognito doesn’t hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider or the websites you visit.”
Mr. Larson recommended Tor in his article, a browser that allows for private web activity.
Mr. Marlinspike said the presidential election had spurred a lot of interest in Signal, leading to a “substantial increase in users.”
When asked to speculate why that was, Mr. Marlinspike simply said, “Donald Trump is about to be in control of the most powerful, invasive
and least accountable surveillance apparatus in the world.”
Signal is available for both Android and iOS.
