Signal Becomes Protesters’ Go To Messaging App With Its New Face-Blur Tool

In a blog post by Signal, the company has added a new feature/tool that gives the ability to blur faces in photos sent via the app. This feature comes in the wake of the past few days of unrest due to protests across the country against racism and police brutality. The outrage is triggered by the recent murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police.

The company wants to support people on the street and who want their voices to be heard. In the blog post, the company said that “We believe that something in America needs to change, and even if we don’t know exactly how, we support and trust in the people who are self-organizing around the country to figure it out.”

This tool can prove to be invaluable for many Signal users to send sensitive information such as photos where someone might rather not be identifiable.

Signal has shown major support to protests against police brutality all over the world. Moxie Marlinspike, the company’s founder, said that “We’ve also been working to figure out additional ways we can support everyone in the street right now. One immediate thing seems clear: 2020 is a pretty good year to cover your face.”

While the face blurring feature is be found in any other photo editor app, but it is hard to determine whether it is secure. For example, most editing apps host their computation-intensive processes on cloud infrastructure. This may lead to retention of a copy of a photo being edited.

For people who have any sensitive information on their phone, it’s better to store it in trust apps. In the recent few years, Signal has become one of the few apps trusted app among justifiably paranoid.