"Where Signal Scores Over WhatsApp": Co-Founder Brian Acton To NDTV

Signal, the secure messaging service rapidly emerging as an alternative to WhatsApp, "absolutely scores over" the Facebook-owned platform in the battle to ensure the privacy of user data, co-founder Brian Acton told NDTV on Tuesday. Mr Acton, who helped create both products, said that apart from features like 'disappearing messages' (which WhatsApp also offers) Signal has total encryption - this includes metadata, which is data that helps servers identify, among other things, the place, time and date of messages. In other words, if your messages get hacked, the hacker only sees garbled alpha-numeric strings. WhatsApp too offers encryption but, for now, also tracks some data, such as IP addresses.