Piet Rive's Profile
Reviews
April 16, 2020
Privacy THREAT
This is your potential privacy nightmare. NO END-TO-END Encryption.
Please be wise and stay with Signal Messenger, it has all the same functionality and is secure end to end encrypted and NOT spamming your contacts like Marco Polo, Signal only sends an invite upon your own request. Marco Polo App is non of this... stay away from this app, for your own sake. (besides Signal, there is of course WhatsApp which is also "end to end encrypted", but we all know this is owned by Facebook, and they steal your contact details too). It is also not compliant with the EU-GDPR, there is no way to contact them and have your chats removed from their server when you lose your phone number (prepaid for example). Nowhere is said how long your chats and (intimate) video conversations are stored on THEIR servers, and no way of telling how well all your UNENCRYPTED messages are protected against a data leak. Stay away from this app...!!
1 person found this helpful.
April 16, 2020
Higly customizable and secure mesenger app
Signal is a perfect app for your children to start their discovery into instant messaging:
By limiting / permitting permissions (after installation) you can customize the END-TO END encrypted messenger app for what is suitable to your kids.
Do this in combination with Google Family link so the child cannot change the settings itself.
From a privacy point of view Signal is the top tier Messenger app. It will only be able to send and receive messages from your contacts that have signal installed, no fear for unsolicited messages from strangers.
You have the possibility to make Signal your default SMS app as well, I would recommend against this setting for children as an extra precaution your child is not getting a high phone bill due to messaging to friends without realizing it is SMS instead of Signal network. If you do not want your child to invite others by SMS to download Signal, you can prevent this by denying Signal access to SMS in permissions.
You can revoke the permission to access the storage of the device by Signal so the child cannot send high resolution pictures and movies by signal, you can even prevent voice / video call and photo messages by denying access to the camera and microphone, but that would defy the purpose of the app besides text messages of course.
Signal has all the functionality of other chat and video call messengers, however the quality of the call can sometimes be bad therefore no 5 stars. Also if not updated in time, it might not communicate well with older / newer versions, they have not the same deep pockets as Whatsapp from Facebook, on the other hand it will never share or link your contacts to anyone else or use any of your information for other purposes than making signal work. No in app purchases (yet... don't know how long the makers can uphold this strategy).