It has never been more important than now to use encrypted and secure applications to send messages. There are still many who do not know why or which applications apply secure and encrypted messaging. In this article, we will go thru the basics and give advice on which applications to use.
So why do we care at all about secure and encrypted apps? Online privacy, identity theft, protect your data, paranoia but really anyone who would like to keep its conversations truly private. Almost everyone is online now and the understanding of why to keep your information secure is common knowledge. Even the old “Nothing to hide argument” is completely dead! But if you are in doubt listen to Glenn Greenwald’s why privacy matters TED talk and then come back here and download one of the following apps.
Telegram
Telegram is one of our favourites among all the different encrypted messaging applications. It has native applications to all the major platforms like Android, iPhone, Windows, OSX and Linux. They have all this end-to-end encryption that’s needed when you want privacy but its opt-in so not turned on by default. So you need to start a secret chat to use the encryption to enjoy secure and private messaging. One more thing that’s not top-notch is that they are using its own custom MTProto encryption and that group chats are not secure at all. Cryptography experts are very critic and do not think that Telegram is that secure.
Signal
Signal is a messaging application from Open Whisper Systems. This applications also have all the major mobile and desktop native applications. All Signal software is open source and licensed under different licenses such as GPLv3 and AGPLv3. The source code can be found and studied on its GitHub repository. So this app is one of our new favourites because it is really true secure. With end-to-end encrypted group chats and messaging on default its unbelievable good. It also has regularly audited encryption and is blessed by Edward Snowden.
WhatsApp started as a startup and added end-to-end encryption to its applications in early 2016. Since its such a popular application among the whole world and that Facebook bought the company we can’t really trust them anymore. So even how many of your friends that’s on this app you need to start talking them out of it. Send them this article and the TED Talk or any good youtube video of Edward Snowden talking about why privacy matters. Do it now!
Summary
So this is just a few of all the apps that claim that they are safe, secure and encrypted. The only thing we have to say it that skip the mainstream ones and switch over to for example our favourite Signal! You will thank yourself in the future if you do it now.