Choosing a secure messaging app is getting more complicated on account of the increasing number of excellent choices. If there's a downside to all of the positive technological progress - it's that it can be overwhelming. It seems clear today that privacy by default is the future, and that's a welcomed move in the right direction. The result is that the encrypted messaging app space is becoming beautifully diverse, technologically advanced, and more user-friendly. The increased demand for privacy (read: increased demand for less abuse of data) has resulted in more mind-share and innovation on the text app supply side. This represents a dramatic shift in user expectations from just a few years ago, and it has far reaching effects for individuals, organizations, and societies broadly. Fortunately, how those apps (and the infrastructure and organizations behind them) handle the increasingly vast troves of personal information being exchanged is changing with the times, too.Įver more people are coming to understand that they should expect private communications to be, well, private by default - not open to eavesdroppers, hackers, or for sale to the highest bidder on virtual auction blocks. The modern text app is expected to handle everything from video calls, to money transfers, to location information, to sending various media. Most obviously, of course, is the fact that a secure messaging app isn't just about basic text anymore - what sort of data they're expected to handle has rapidly evolved. Like Telegram, all messages and calls are end-to-end encrypted using the Whisper Protocol which is open source.Something very interesting is happening on a global scale for the once taken-for-granted "text app". Signal uses the Open Whisper System which comes recommended by none other than Bruce Schneier and Edward Snowden, one of the most well-known whistle blower of the decade. All Telegram apps are open-sourced and the company itself is not for profit, however, their backend is not open source which has raised some eyebrows. All messages and calls in Telegram are end-to-end encrypted however their decision to not use the existing Signal protocol drew some flak, forcing them to release a statement explaining the difference between the two. This is why most people use them in the first place, but exactly how secure are they, and how private your conversations are? The Telegram team, two Russian brothers, are so confident of their MTProto encryption technology that they announced a $200,000 followed by a $300,000 contest to break in to Telegram. This is the main selling point of both Telegram and Signal. I have been using Telegram myself for some time now since it is the go-to platform for blockchain companies and enthusiast, but Signal is somewhat new to me.īoth the messenger apps come with dark mode but Telegram has other color options too. We will take a look at how secure these two apps are and how they handle user data and privacy. We will compare these two alternatives head to head and find out which one is the most secure. This has raised a furor on social media with many high-profile people like Edward Snowden and Elon Musk asking users to choose Signal or Telegram over WhatsApp. The most recent case being Facebook updating WhatsApp’s policy making it mandatory to share data with Facebook. Two messaging apps that have seen a lot of traction are Telegram and Signal. As such, the industry has seen a rise in awareness among the end-users when it comes to privacy-focused apps in niches like browsers and messengers. The last few years have really shaken the social media industry with some high profile revelations about how the giants of Silicon Valley use and abuse our data, often without our permission or consent.
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