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Choosing an Encrypted Messaging App Intermediate Sein, Telegram and WhatsApp, do not waste your time with anything other than Signal. It’s not about cute features, more bells and whistles or what’s the easiest to use – it’s about pure privacy. If this is what you’re looking for, then Signal will be no better.
By this time, you probably already know what happened. Heard on January 7 in a tweet ‘global, technological maghul’ Elon Musk continued his feud with Facebook by pleading that people abandon their WhatsApp messenger and use Signal instead. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted his call again. About the same time, right social network Parler became dark as a result of the Capitol attacks, while political boycotters fled Facebook and Twitter. It was the perfect storm – the number of new users on Signal and Telegram has increased by ten million since.
Read more: Everything to know about Signal
The uproar has also fueled security and privacy investigations over messaging programs. There are a few communities among the three download numbers that currently dominate. All three are mobile applications available in the Play Store and App Store, which support messaging across platforms, have group features, and offer multifactor authentication, and can be used to share files and photos. They all offer encryption for text messages, voice and video calls.
Look at this:
Why Signal Rises: Elon Musk
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Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp all use end-to-end encryption in a section of their app, which means that if a party intercepts your text, it should be cluttered and unreadable. It also means that the people who work for any of the programs will not be able to see the exact content of your messages when you communicate with another private user. This prevents law enforcement, your mobile service provider, and other snooping entities from reading the content of your messages, even if they intercept (what happens more often than you would think).
However, the privacy and security differences between Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp could not be greater. Here’s what you need to know about each one.
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- Do not collect data, only your phone number
- Free, no ads, funded by the nonprofit Signal Foundation
- Fully open source
- Encryption: signal protocol
Signal is a typical single tap installation app that can be found in your normal markets, such as Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store, and works just like the regular SMS app. This is an open source development offered for free by the nonprofit Signal Foundation and has been famously used for years by high-privacy icons such as Edward Snowden.
The most important function of Signal is that it can – to an individual or a group – send fully encrypted text, video, audio and picture messages, after verifying your phone number and leaving you independent of the other Signal users’ identity verify. For a deeper dive into the possible pitfalls and limitations of encrypted messaging programs, CNET’s Laura Hautala statement is a lifesaver.
In terms of privacy, it’s hard to beat Signal’s offering. It does not store your user data. And beyond the encryption ingenuity, it offers you extensive on-screen privacy options, including app-specific locks, blank pop-ups for notifications, anti-surveillance equipment, and disappearing messages.
Occasional mistakes, of course, have proven that the technology is not bulletproof at all, but the overall arc of Signal’s reputation and results keeps it at the top of every privacy – conscious person’s tools for identity protection. The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times (which also recommends WhatsApp) and The Wall Street Journal all recommend using Signal to contact their reporters securely.
For many years, the most important privacy challenge for Signal has not been in the technology, but in its wider use. Sending an encrypted signal message is great, but if your receiver is not using Signal, your privacy may be useless. Think of it like the herd immunity created by vaccines, but for your privacy for messages.
However, now that the approvals of Musk and Dorsey have sent an increase in users to get a privacy shot, the challenge may be a thing of the past.
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- Data associated with you: name, phone number, contacts, user ID
- Free, upcoming advertising platform and premium features, mainly funded by founder
- Only partially open source
- Encryption: MTProto
Telegram falls somewhere in the middle of the privacy scale, and it stands out differently from other messaging programs because of its efforts to create a social network-style environment. While it does not collect as much data as WhatsApp, it also does not provide encrypted group calls like WhatsApp, nor does it provide as much user data privacy and transparency as Signal. The data collected by Telegram and which can be linked to you contains your name, telephone number, contact list and user ID.
Telegram also collects your IP address, something else that Signal does not do. And unlike Signal and WhatsApp, Telegram’s one-to-one messaging is not encrypted by default. You should rather turn it on in the app settings. Telegram group messages are also not encrypted. Researchers have found that while some of Telegram’s MTProto encryption scheme was open-source, some sections were not, so it’s not entirely clear what happens to your texts once they’re on Telegram’s servers.
Telegram has seen several violations. Some 42 million Telegram user IDs and phone numbers were exposed in March 2020, presumably the work of Iranian government officials. This would be the second massive violation related to Iran, after 15 million Iranian users were exposed in 2016. A telegram bug was exploited by the Chinese authorities in 2019 during the Hong Kong protests. Then there was the deep-fake bot on Telegram that was allowed to create fake nudity of women from ordinary photos. Recently, the GPS-enabled feature that allows you to find others in your area has created clear privacy issues.
I reached out to Telegram to find out if there were any major security plans for the app, and what its security priorities were after this latest surge of users. I will update this story when I hear back.
Angela Lang / CNET
- Data associated with you: too many to list (see below)
- Free; business versions available for free, funded by Facebook
- Not open source, except for encryption
- Encryption: signal protocol
Let us be clear: there is a difference between security and privacy. Security is about protecting your data from unauthorized access, and privacy is about protecting your identity, regardless of who has access to that data.
On the security front, the encryption of WhatsApp is the same as that of Signal, and the encryption is secure. But the encryption protocol is one of the few open source parts of WhatsApp, so we are asked to trust WhatsApp more than our Signal is. WhatsApp’s real app and other infrastructure also encountered hacks, just like Telegram.
Jeff Bezos’ phone was hacked in January 2020 by a WhatsApp video message. In December of the same year, Texas’ attorney general claimed – though it did not prove – that Facebook and Google had entered into a backroom agreement to disclose the content of WhatsApp messages. A spyware vendor has targeted a WhatsApp vulnerability with its software to hack 1400 devices, leading to a lawsuit by Facebook. WhatsApp’s unencrypted backup function in the cloud has long been considered by security experts as a security risk and was one way the FBI obtained evidence from the infamous political judge Paul Manafort. To top it off, WhatsApp has also become known over the years as a haven for scam artists and malware providers (just as Telegram has attracted its own share of platform abuse, as outlined above).
Despite the hacks, it’s not just the security aspect that concerns me about WhatsApp just like the privacy. I do not fancy Facebook having another software installed on my phone from which it can delete even more behavioral data via an easy-to-use app with a nice interface and more security than your regular messenger.
If WhatsApp says it cannot see the contents of the encrypted messages that you send to another WhatsApp user, there is no list of other data that it collects that can be linked to your identity: your unique device ID, usage and advertising data, purchase history and financial information, physical location, phone number, your contact information and that of your contact list, what products you have talked to, how often you use the app and how well you perform. The list goes on. It is much more than Signal or Telegram.
When asked by the company why users with less privacy should decide on data, a WhatsApp spokesperson pointed out that it limits what it does with this user data, and that the data collection only applies to some users. For example, the collection of financial transaction data is only relevant for the WhatsApp users in Brazil, where the service is available.
“We do not share your contacts with Facebook, and we can not see your shared location,” the WhatsApp spokesman told CNET.
“While most people only use WhatsApp to chat with friends and family, we also started offering the opportunity to chat to people with businesses to get help or make a purchase, with health authorities to get information about COVID, with support for domestic violence. agencies, and with fact checkers to give people the ability to get accurate information, “the spokesman said.” As we expand our services, we continue to protect people’s messages and the information we collect , to limit. ”
Is WhatsApp more convenient than Signal and Telegram? Yes. Is it more beautiful? Certainly. Is it just as safe? We will not know unless we see more of the source code. But is it more private? Not when it comes to how much data it compares. For real privacy I stick to Signal and I recommend that you do the same.