I have nothing against Signal. I just don’t have access to a phone number right now. I fully intend to use the Signal when I get a number. I know there is no silver bullet, no absolutes in the privacy world but I’m looking for any messengers that are generally considered to be private and secure on Android that I can try to convince my friends and family to use. I have a mid - low threat model, it’s just the thought of giving the Zuck anymore of my family’s data makes my skin crawl.
this makes more sense if you understand public and private keys
when encrypting a message, there are two keys. the public key can only be used to encrypt and the private key to decrypt. a recipient will put its public key out and a peer wishing to send it a message will use this key to encrypt it. once the message arrives, the recipient can use their private key to then decrypt the message