The City of Suffolk Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia

Signal Tips

Dec. 16, 2025

These are security tips and general usage tips. These will be updated as I become more familiar with Signal

Security Tips

Signal is a great messaging app for having reasonably secure conversations but it's far from anything that provides government level security. For the average user, here are some things to keep in mind when using Signal:

It's hard to be sure who's in your group.

For example, you may have someone in your group who shows up as "BG" and you might think you know who that is. But you don't really know, and when you click on BG for more information, you don't get much. That's because Signal protects the privacy of its users. That's great when it comes to your own privacy but frustrating if you're trying to Identify imposters.

"BG" didn't break into your group by brute force. If BG didn't create the group, then BG was invited. But members of your group can accidently invite or be tricked into inviting unwanted people into your group.

Administrators should periodically check the membership. But always keep in mind that someone you don't know could be lurking.

Messages are not encrypted on the device.

You don't have to enter your password every time you open Signal, and if someone gains access to your phone, they don't either. As long as they can get past your lock screen, they can see your messages. And even if you have your own phone tightly secured, you can't control the security of people you send messages to.

Messages may appear on your lock screen

There is a setting in Signal, under notifications, to show names and messages, names only, or no names or messages. You should check that setting if you don't want people seeing your incoming messages while your phone is locked.

Signal has spammers

People will send message requests or ask to be invited into your groups. The good news is, Signal doesn't allow full messages from people you haven't approved, so all you get from spammers are those requests. It's generally safe to ignore any requests from people you don't recognize.

Hackers gonna hack

Signal found and closed a vulnerabilty where hackers can link their devices with your phone. That vulnerabilty is fixed but who knows what's next? Hackers are always looking for ways to break in and occasionally they find something

The bottom line - Nothing is perfect and Signal isn't national secret level security. It's good for preventing snoopers from intercepting your messages but prone to human error like including unintended recipients or losing track of physical devices. So balance anything you write accordingly

General Tips

Use the Reply feature

To help keep conversations in order, you can use the reply feature so when someone says “Georgia just flipped a seat for Democrats” and someone else says “ICE is coming to Hampton Roads” and you say “Right On!!”, people know what you’re responding to. On my desktop I move the mouse over the post and then click the curvy arrow that appears. On my phone I hold my finger on the post until the menu pops up, then choose “Reply”

Make Conversations

Feel free to create new groups for new conversations - even for temporary conversations. So if you're planning a trip, you can make a new conversation for that trip even if it involves the same people who are in another conversation. Doing so provides even more organization for keeping your conversations separate and also allows you to adjust each group independently.

Don't rely on Signal for long-term history

Messages are stored on your device but not on Signal's servers. There are steps you can take to back up your messages, but these steps are clunky. Expect that if your device crashes or if you get a new one, you may loose all of your Signal history

Know that new group members don't see old messages

Since messages aren't stored on Signal's servers, new group members don't have access to old messages. So you might have to catch people up when they join your group.

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