Crypto chat app Signal to build in tools to bypass censorship

Open Whisper Systems, the organization responsible for developing the secure chat app Signal, has announced that it wants to circumvent its software censorship. The decision follows Signal’s blocking in Egypt.

In a tweet writes the organization that the new position should be available in the coming weeks. Open Whisper Systems does not provide further details about the exact implementation of the feature or how it works. The announcement follows the announcement that after investigation, turned out Egypt is blocking Signal communication. In the meantime, the organization advises users to use Tor or a VPN.

However, these methods are not watertight either. It emerged this weekend that Turkey is once again blocking access to the Tor network, in addition to access to certain VPN services. This happened earlier in November, when services such as Hotspot Shield and Private Internet Access could not be used. In a recent post, security researcher ‘The Grugq’ states that it is often better to use a VPN instead of Tor, because VPNs are less noticeable. In addition, the Tor browser would often lag behind using old Firefox code.

Signal is a communication app that makes it possible to exchange encrypted messages using the Signal protocol, which is also the basis of WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption.