Imagine you do not want to have a smartphone for some reasons, but still need to have a little bit of privacy. Well, there is a way to use a desktop version of Signal on a computer (MacOs, Windows or Linux). You just need to be able to receive a One Time Password by SMS. This can be done on a regular “brick” phone, a burner or a Virtual Phone.

I followed the recipe described here.

You first need to install three things on your computer:

1. The desktop version of Signal corresponding to your OS:
2. java
3. The signal-cli command line program

For this last one you should download the signal-cli-*.tar.gz archive.

you can verify the download in the following way:

1. download the signature signal-cli-*.tar.gz.asc
2. Download the public PGP key:

   gpg --recv-key FA10826A74907F9EC6BBB7FC2BA2CD21B5B09570

3. Verify it:

   gpg --verify [filename.asc] [filename]

4. Check the “Good Signature” appearing

1. Remove all VPNs if you have any active, and possibly deactivate anti tracking addons on your browser temporarily
2. go to this website, and solve the captcha