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Messaging app that Edward Snowden uses ‘every day’ now available for Android

Edward Snowden, the famed leaker of many a confidential NSA document, clearly needs some kind of encrypted communication medium. Yesterday, he came out on Twitter to say that at least one of the apps he uses is called Signal every day. And it just so happens that the app, which has been available on the iPhone for quite a while, is now available for Android….

Straight from the Open Whisper Systems blog:

Today we’ve started rolling out Signal for Android, which unites simple private messaging and simple private calling into a single app on Android. This is the culmination of our effort to combine TextSecure and RedPhone into one app, which we began on iPhone and are now bringing to completion on Android.

TextSecure and RedPhone were two separate apps (the former for secure messaging, and the latter for secure phone calls) from the same company before today’s release, and it was previously possible to send messages between Signal 2.0 on the iPhone (which launched in March of this year) and TextSecure on Android.

With today’s release, TextSecure and RedPhone are finally coming together to offer one complete package for Google’s mobile OS. You can grab the open source app, featuring end-to-end encryption (obviously), group chat, and more on the Play Store for free. More details can be found at Open Whisper Systems’ website.

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Avatar for Stephen Hall Stephen Hall

Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twitter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.


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