Signal vs WhatsApp vs Telegram: Here’s which secure messaging app to use

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• Does not collect data, only your phone number
• Free, ad-free, funded by the non-profit Signal Foundation
• Fully open-source
• Encryption: signal protocol

Signal is a typical one-click installer app that you can find in your normal markets like the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store and works like the regular text messaging app. This is an open source development provided free by the nonprofit Signal Foundation and has been used for years by high profile privacy icons like Edward Snowden.

The main function of Signal is that it can send – to an individual or a group – fully encrypted text, video, audio and photo messages, after verifying your phone number and allowing you to independently verify the identity of the users. other Signal users. For a deeper dive into the potential pitfalls and limitations of encrypted messaging apps, CNET’s Laura Hautala’s explanation is a lifeline.

When it comes to privacy, it’s hard to beat Signal’s offer. It does not store your user data. And beyond its encryption prowess, it gives you extensive on-screen privacy options, including app-specific locks, blank notification pop-ups, blurry anti-surveillance tools, and disappearing messages.

Occasional bugs have proven the technology far from bulletproof, of course, but Signal’s overall reputation and results arc kept it at the top of the list of protection tools from the identity of each person informed in terms of confidentiality. The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times (which also recommends WhatsApp), and The Wall Street Journal all recommend using Signal to contact journalists safely.

For years, Signal’s main privacy challenge was not in its technology but in its wider adoption. Sending an encrypted Signal message is great, but if your recipient isn’t using Signal, your privacy may be zero. Think of it like the collective immunity created by vaccines, but for the privacy of your messages.

Now that Musk and Dorsey’s approvals have sent a wave of users in for a privacy booster photo, that challenge may be a thing of the past.

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• Data linked to you: name, phone number, contacts, user ID
• Upcoming free advertising platform and premium features, funded primarily by the founder
• Only partially open-source
• Encryption: MTProto

Telegram sits somewhere in the middle of the privacy scale and stands out from other messaging apps due to its efforts to create a social network-like environment. While it doesn’t collect as much data as WhatsApp, it also doesn’t offer encrypted group calling like WhatsApp, nor as much user data privacy and business transparency as Signal. Data collected by Telegram that could be linked to you includes your name, phone number, contact list and user ID.

Telegram also collects your IP address, which is something else Signal does not do. And unlike Signal and WhatsApp, individual Telegram messages are not encrypted by default. Instead, you need to enable them in the app settings. Telegram group messages are also not encrypted. The researchers found that while some of Telegram’s MTProto encryption systems were open-source, some parts were not, so it’s not entirely clear what happens to your texts once they’re on. Telegram servers.

Telegram has seen several breaches. Some 42 million Telegram user IDs and phone numbers were exposed in March 2020, believed to be the work of Iranian government officials. It would be the second massive Iran-related breach, following the discovery of 15 million Iranian users in 2016. A Telegram bug was exploited by Chinese authorities in 2019 during protests in Hong Kong. Then there was the fake bot on Telegram which was allowed to create female nudes forged from regular images. More recently, its GPS feature that lets you find other people near you has created obvious privacy issues.

I reached out to Telegram to find out if there were any major security plans underway for the app and what its security priorities were after this latest wave of users. I’ll update this story when I hear.

Angela Lang / CNET

• Data related to you: too much to list (see below)
• Free; professional versions available for free, funded by Facebook
• Not open-source, except for encryption
• Encryption: signal protocol

Let’s 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.

Security wise, WhatsApp’s encryption is the same as Signal’s, and that encryption is secure. But this encryption protocol is one of the few open-source parts of WhatsApp, so we’re being asked to trust WhatsApp more than Signal. The actual WhatsApp app and other infrastructure also faced hacks, as did Telegram.

Jeff Bezos’ phone was hacked in January 2020 via a WhatsApp video message. In December of that year, the Texas attorney general alleged – but failed to prove – that Facebook and Google had made a behind-the-scenes deal to reveal the contents of WhatsApp messages. A spyware vendor targeted a WhatsApp vulnerability with its software to hack 1,400 devices, which resulted in a Facebook lawsuit. WhatsApp’s unencrypted cloud backup feature has long been viewed as a security risk by privacy experts and was one of the FBI’s ways of obtaining evidence on notorious political fixer Paul Manafort. To top it off, WhatsApp has also become a haven for crooks and malware vendors over the years (just as Telegram has attracted its own share of platform abuse, detailed above).

Despite the hacks, it’s not the security aspect that concerns me as much about WhatsApp as it is about privacy. I can’t wait for Facebook to have yet another software installed on my phone from which it can extract even more behavioral data through an easy-to-use app with a nice interface and more security than your regular messenger.

When WhatsApp says it cannot display the content of encrypted messages you send to another WhatsApp user, what does not say is that there is a long list of other data that it collects that could be related to your identity: Your unique device ID, usage and advertising data, purchase history and financial information, physical location, phone number, your contact details and those of your contact list, with what products you have interacted, how often you use the app and how it works when you do. The list goes on. It’s much more than Signal or Telegram.

When I asked the company why users should settle for less data privacy, a spokesperson for WhatsApp pointed out that this limits what it does with that user data and that data collection is not. ‘applies only to certain users. For example, collecting data on financial transactions would only be relevant for WhatsApp users in Brazil, where the service is available.

“We don’t share your contacts with Facebook and we can’t see your shared location,” the WhatsApp spokesperson told CNET.

“While most people only use WhatsApp to chat with friends and family, we’ve also started offering the option for people to chat with businesses for help or to make a purchase, with health officials to get information on COVID, with the support of domestic violence agencies, and with fact checkers to provide people with the ability to get accurate information, ”the spokesperson said. “As we expand our services, we continue to protect people’s messages and limit the information we collect.”

Is WhatsApp more convenient than Signal and Telegram? Yes. Is it prettier? Sure. Is it just as safe? We won’t know unless we see more of its source code. But is it more private? Not when it comes to the amount of data it collects in comparison. For true privacy, I stick with Signal and recommend you do the same.