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Signal app for the Mac could expose private messages

If you use the Signal desktop client on a Mac, be careful with the app’s as they may expose your private messages, reports Motherboard.

Signal is a free app that lets you communicate instantly while avoiding SMS fees, create groups so that you can chat in real-time with all of your friends at once, and share media and other files. You can send or receive Signal messages using your laptop or desktop Mac.

With the software, messages can be set to “self-destruct,” meaning there is no paper trail for conversations in the app. However, with Signal’s default settings on a Mac, your friends’ messages appear—and live on—on the operating system’s notifications bar even if the message is set to self-destruct using Signal’s timer, according to Motherboard. These notifications include the sender’s name and the message’s content.

Motherboard adds that this isn’t a major threat for most folks. Someone would hav to hack or otherwise get their hands on your Mac to read the messages.


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Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.