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Sync across multiple devices (not E2EE).

Signal is a non-profit organization that relies on donations to operate. In addition to messages, Signal supports disappearing messages, E2EE group voice chats, and now group video chats between up to eight users. It should be noted, though, that contacts are stored locally only and cannot be accessed by Signal Foundation. This makes Signal very transparent in use, but the fact that users must register with a valid phone number in order to match contacts is also the main source of criticism the app receives. Signal will warn you when messages are sent unencrypted. Texts exchanged to other Signal users are end-to-end encrypted, but texts to non-Signal users are not.

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Unlike WhatsApp, Signal is designed to replace your phone’s regular SMS messenger app on Android (not iOS). This is a particular concern because Signal uses AWS to host its infrastructure, which is subject to legal demand from the US government. In theory, this could result in users’ metadata and data(but not messages) being compromised at the server level.

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The app itself has not been audited, however, and some security concerns exist around Signal’s reliance on Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX). Only “the date and time a user registered with Signal and the last date of a user’s connectivity to the Signal service.” This is a claim that has been proven in court.

Unlike WhatsApp and other third-party apps that implement the Signal protocol, however, the Signal app from the Signal Foundation is 100% open source.Ĭrucially, in light of recent heightened awareness about WhatsApp’s privacy policies, the Signal app and Signal Foundation keep almost no metadata related to the app’s usage.

These include WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Skype. The Signal Protocol is open source, has been professionally audited for security vulnerabilities, and is widely admired for its cryptographic strength.īecause of the quality of the Signal protocol, it is used by a variety of third-party messaging apps to provide secure end-to-end encryption for messages. The Signal messaging protocol is an end-to-end messaging protocol developed by the Signal Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by cryptographer and privacy activist Moxie Marlinspike.

Requires a valid phone number to register.

We have therefore limited the following list of best WhatsApp alternatives to open source messaging apps that use end-to-end encryption (E2EE). Please note that apps are not reviewed in any particular order. We believe open source is one of the best indicators that an app can be trusted.

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By publishing an app’s code publicly, anyone can examine it to ensure the app is doing what it is supposed to be doing. Open source code is another important indicator that a service is secure. But this does nothing to stop Facebook from abusing metadata: information about whom you communicate with, from where, at what time, how often, and from which device. WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, so the actual messages are therefore secure on the platform.

This means messages are encrypted on your device and can only be decrypted on the device of the intended recipient. News that WhatsApp has been sharing large amounts of highly personal data with Facebook since 2016 has led a large number of unhappy users to look for an alternative messaging app that genuinely respects their privacy.Īt Proton, we view end-to-end encryption as a core requirement for any messenger app that claims to be secure and private.

Ip messenger alternative