For family, I just text or call. I know it's not the most secure, but it's not like I'm doing illegal dealings in texts to family.
Discussion
Think about how much the contents of your texts, which are all plaintext, would help someone wrench attack you.
Don't believe the propaganda that only criminals need encryption.
Things like "we almost got blown off the side of a mountain in a tent" and kitten pics aren't gonna give anyone much to work with.
I'm sure you are the only person on the planet who never does any of the following.
Sends and identifiable photo to family
shares photos with exif data
texts went to the X store need anything?
texts meet you a X and time Y
texts I'll be home around x time
texts on my way
texts any PII
If you don't think your texts can be used against you you have failed at adversarial thinking. This is especially true if you have kids with living grandparents.
I never said I was perfect. I'm just saying, we all could do better, yes? If we really care about keeping our identities our own, we would do less free giving of our information. I have only recently begun the erasing of my identity from the clutches of the technocrats and their ilk but I can't help but feel like pushing services that do ask for your info, even if they say they're not sharing it, is counterintuitive to the privacy ethos.
I tried nearly all of them. Signal was the only one with a grandma proof level of reliability and ease of use.
Snowden uses Signal daily and publicly admits to it.
Top officials in the US government use Signal group chats to plan military strikes. We know this because of a user error not a hack.
A lot of other encrypted messengers admit they are are using the signal algorithm.
I really can't wrap my head around all the fud spread about Signal.
Sending everything plaintext because you are paranoid to give the global benchmark secure messenger you phone number is textbook letting perfect be the enemy of good.