After the blunder that led to the accidental addition of the magazine's editor-in-chief The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a group chat on Signal that included senior White House officials, a question arises: Which messaging apps are the most secure?
Although this security breach pushed the former US president Donald Trump While it was unclear whether Signal had any vulnerabilities, the platform actually remains one of the most secure messaging apps on the market, according to The New York Post.
Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal, said: “Signal is the gold standard for private communication.”
She added: "We are an open-source, non-profit organization, and we develop and apply end-to-end encryption (E2EE) and privacy-preserving technologies throughout our system to protect data and message content."
According to the site Inc.End-to-end encryption means that messages can only be read by the sender and recipient. Unlike other messaging apps, users aren't required to link their phone number to their account to sign up, but they do need to verify their contacts to ensure the identity of the people they're communicating with.
The site Inc. says: "Overall, Signal is widely considered the most secure messaging app for consumers because third parties can audit its security protocols, and the company doesn't have access to metadata about your conversations."
Compared to platforms like WhatsApp, Whittaker argues that competitors don't match Signal's level of security.
She wrote on X: "WhatsApp does not protect, for either consumers or businesses, personal metadata such as contact lists, who speaks to whom, when, profile picture, etc. And when they are forced to do so, as is the case for all companies that collect data, they hand over this sensitive and revealing information."
Our magazine Inc. warns that while the exact content of messages sent via WhatsApp is encrypted, metadata, including information about the recipient, is not. In reality, this data is stored by WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta.
iMessage, the messaging service used for communication between Apple devices, is considered the most secure option, as long as you only communicate with other iPhone users.
According to Inc., Apple individually encrypts messages in group conversations, which is "technically more secure" than Signal's method.
However, the disadvantages of iMessage are that messages exchanged between an iPhone and an Android device are significantly less secure.
In addition, the dependence on iCloud Saving conversations without advanced data protection means your messages are stored on Apple's servers and can be handed over to law enforcement if the company is compelled to do so.
Finally, the platform Telegram is also a popular messaging app, but according to Inc., communications are only encrypted during transmission and stored on the platform's servers, which potentially exposes your messages to the risk of hacking if someone accesses these servers.
