Clear signal: Indian startups make mega move from Facebook’s WhatsApp to Signal amid data privacy row

There’s a claim digital consumers must have stumbled upon quite a few times in recent history — Data is the new oil. It is to the digital economy what oil is to the industrial economy and much like energy, which is extracted from the mighty oil, information comes from the mighty data. While the adage might be true in some circumstances, particularly in the application of deep technologies such as artificial intelligence, and machine learning, or to keep the proverbial digital world ‘connected’, but unlike data sharing and distribution, oil extraction doesn’t risk its source in any known way. Data sharing, not mining, does risks digital privacy and the safety of individuals and businesses. That’s what the Facebook-owned WhatsApp’s rival Signal doesn’t intend to do, something that the former has allegedly been engaged in.