A secure messenger will ensure a high degree of confidentiality for your conversations. It’s not all about getting hacked, but also about keeping your discussions safe from nosy governments.
The thing is many messengers promise to offer secure and encrypted chats. In reality, it could be true, so you may get a bit of help against hackers. But then, governments are a different kettle of fish.
With these thoughts in mind, here are a few secured messengers that will keep your conversations for yourself and your interlocutors only.
Signal Private Messenger
Signal Private Messenger is totally free and that’s a serious plus for a secured messenger. Its primary goals are privacy and security. In other words, you’ll have a fine experience with no risks whatsoever, whether it comes to group chats, texts, audio or video chats.
Encryption features an open source technology, so anyone can look into it. It’s available on more platforms too and allows cross platform chats.
It’s a well featured messenger, but it doesn’t offer too many fun extras. It’s simple and efficient, without any bells and whistles. Every now and then, it may seem a bit slow, but it also depends on your Internet connection.
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messengers in the world. It encrypts everything by default, so you don’t have to mess about with features. It offers video calls, audio calls, chats, voice messages, file transmission, you name it. Pretty much everything is implemented in it.
While it is, indeed, a secured messenger, it’s not the most private one. At the end of the day, it’s owned by Facebook, which has a reputation in terms of privacy. In other words, if you’re after getting on the dark web or having some fishy chats, you better look elsewhere.
Other than that, it requires your phone number verification to work. As for backups, it’s unknown whether they’re monitored by governmental agencies or not.
Telegram Messenger
Telegram Messenger has become a top runner lately. It gained more notoriety over the past decade. It offers everything you may expect from a messenger, from file downloads and voice messages to video calls. But then, there’s something about it that makes it so popular for social movements.
Telegram is very social, but not as solid as other messengers. Not all messages are fully encrypted either. With all these, it seems to be a popular choice for people involved in hacking or dark web activities. The design is great and it comes with a bunch of bells and whistles that make it stand out in the crowd.
Wire
Wire is another great platform providing end-to-end encryption by default, regardless of what you use it for. The encryption is always on, so you don’t need to activate anything. A different encryption key is given to each message, only to ensure nothing gets compromised.
Wire is open source, meaning there was plenty of time for experts to look into it and inspect it. It doesn’t send any analytics to apps or programs, yet it’s fully compliant with laws around the world, especially the harsh ones in the EU.
Threema
There’s one thing that makes Threema stand out, the restraint on metadata. Basically, data will never be used the wrong way once delivered. Once delivered, the message is automatically deleted from Threema’s servers, so tracking conversations is a bit difficult for governments, nearly impossible.
Threema has been designed as an open source software, so there are no hidden elements running in the background. Besides, you won’t have to verify yourself with a phone number or email address, which makes it even better in terms of security and privacy.
Pryvate
While you can use the above mentioned messengers on mobile devices, Pryvate takes everything to another level. It’s exclusively made for iOS and Android devices and offers triple encryption for everything, from chats and video calls to emails. It takes security very seriously and that’s what makes it so popular.
Relying on the SHA-256 encryption standards, means there are no servers to store conversations. Instead, the connection is direct between you and your interlocutor. You can set messages to delete automatically too, even from the recipients' devices.
It’s likely to take a more sophisticated approach and even include Tor browsing, a crypto wallet, and many other extras.
While these apps tend to dominate the market, the list can definitely go longer than that. Here are a few other solid options to consider:
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Wickr Me
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Viber
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Silence
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iMessage
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Line
As a final conclusion, there are quite a few good options when it comes to secured messengers. But then, you need to understand why you need one. Security and encryption will protect you against hackers, but governmental agencies can still grab data from many of these chat programs.
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