Telegram details plan to include ads in public channels

The debate is old and, over the years,  WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal  have gained new features, changed their rules of use and privacy policies several times. Far from being the only option for sending secure messages, the trio are easily among the most popular mobile messaging apps. Follow the comparison between the three main messengers on the market below and choose the most secure one.

WhatsApp was launched in February 2009 in California (USA) by two former Yahoo! employees, Jan Koum and Brian Acton. Created at the time to work “only with plain text”, it was  sold for almost US$ 20 billion to Facebook in 2014 — and has incorporated many new features since then.

Telegram came a few years after the launch of WhatsApp, in 2013. It was founded by brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, also founders of VKontakte, the largest social network in Russia and a competitor to Facebook — popularly known as VK, the Russian Orkut.

 

Signal, endorsed by names such as Edward Snowden and Jack Dorsey (CEO of Twitter), is the result of the work of an independent group of software developers called Open Whisper Systems, led by Moxie Marlinspike. The relationship with Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, in addition to his dissatisfaction with the messenger, is more financial. He invested US$50 million of his own money to kickstart the Signal Technology Foundation, a completely non-profit organization. Today he is the interim CEO of the messaging platform.

Differences between WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal

Each of the messengers brings different aspects and positions on various subjects that can be seen more easily in the table below:

	WhatsApp	Telegram	Signal
Funding / Supporter	Goal	Pavel Durov	Signal Foundation and Donors
Collects user data
Types of data collected from users	Purchases / Financial Information / Location / Contact Information / Contacts / User Content / Identifiers / Usage Data / Diagnostic Data	Contact Information / Contacts / Identifiers	Contact information
Encrypts metadata as well
End-to-end encryption enabled by default
Messages can be read by the app company
Creating an account in the application anonymously
Allows you to use a secondary authentication factor
There are messages that can self-destruct
Independent code audit and security analysis

Popularity

WhatsApp is in the eye of a hurricane of criticism over its use of data for advertising purposes after announcing a change in its privacy policies. The app already shares a lot of data with its parent company. In addition, there is no shortage of cases of instability in the messenger.

Meanwhile, Signal and Telegram are seeing 10 reliable ways to delight customers and increase their loyalty record spikes in new users, significantly increasing the costs of operations for both.

But not everyone is there yet, after all, you don’t choose your own messenger. There’s no point in liking app “A” if all your contacts and friends are on app “B”, right? For it to work, everyone needs to be on the same platform. That’s the basics.

The revolt also affects small businesses that saw WhatsApp as a channel to sell their products/services and feared a stampede.

 

Features offered

On WhatsApp you can do practically everything: send messages, photos, videos, documents, contacts, location, make payments, create groups, make video or voice calls, and send audio messages.

But it doesn’t stop there. The messenger also includes the following features:

• reactions with emojis to messages (a feature that was already featured on Telegram);
• migration of conversations between Android and Apple devices;
• sending self-destructing messages ;
• WhatsApp Premium for Business;
• voice call with up to 32 people;
• video calls with up to eight people;
• in-app chat support;
• WhatsApp Web;
• among other resources.

Now let’s move on to Telegram. There you can also create chat groups, send messages, audio messages, send photos, videos and other files, make voice and video calls, bw lists and create secret chats. In addition, the messenger has:

• auto-delete feature so that messages are deleted after a time period defined by you;
• creation of Bots;
• hide the last seen;
• edit messages;
• multiple account management;
• transmission channels;
• between others.

Finally, we have Signal. It also allows you to share texts, voice messages, photos, videos, GIFs and files for free, hold group conversations with threads, and make video calls with up to 16 people.

In Signal you can also change the wallpaper and use animated stickers and, just like in Telegram and WhatsApp, you can also send self-destructing messages.