WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal

Writer: Kiete Schmitt

About a year ago, I downloaded Telegram. It was actually just for a friend, who preferred this app to WhatsApp. A small effort, I thought. Between downloading and now, I get almost daily notifications of other contacts switching to Telegram. I think people are becoming more aware of their privacy and to safeguard it (more) they are switching to Telegram, for instance. In recent weeks, something similar happened with Telegram. I started hearing acquaintances talking about Signal. Another app that safeguards your privacy better? Why were they switching? When I asked them, it turned out WhatsApp's privacy settings had been changed.

I am not a techie, so I did not understand much more of the story, than I have described now. However, I also care about my privacy, so I decided to find out the pros and cons of the three communication tools I just mentioned and share them with you.

WhatsApp
WhatsApp is (I think) familiar to everyone. Launched in 2009 by Jan Koum and Brian Acton, the app was initially only available for iPhone. Soon after, it became available for other devices as well. In 2014, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook. The name WhatsApp is a contraction of ‘What's up?’ and ‘Application’.

From 8 February, new terms of use will go into effect. If you don't agree to them, you will no longer be able to use WhatsApp. What do you have to agree to? First, you agree that usage data shared via WhatsApp will also be shared with Facebook. (Facebook may request this, as they own WhatsApp.) Sharing data with other platforms is not very nice in itself, but the commercial purpose behind it is also something the user has to think about. After all, the data that WhatsApp and Facebook capture can be shared with third parties again. Do you want your data to be a sales product for such big companies? When I heard this, I thought: actually, it is slowly becoming so that I am actually not just using WhatsApp when I install this application, I become part of a much larger network. But what if I have nothing at all to do with Facebook, for example?

This was the extreme side of the (new) terms of use, but there are limits to companies‘ access to your data. Your conversations and phone calls that go through WhatsApp have end-to-end encryption on them. This ensures that WhatsApp cannot access the data either, and thus neither can Facebook and third-party companies. The only thing such companies can use is ’impersonal‘ data such as the frequency with which you use WhatsApp, for example. Note this is not something that will happen only from 8 February, this was done before this as well. So: the only thing that changes from 8 February is actually giving Facebook permission to use that ’impersonal' data from WhatsApp. There is another side note to the new terms of use. Platforms do not have unlimited freedom. They are also bound by national and European laws. So even if we agree to the new terms, the privacy conditions set by the EU remain the same for these companies.

The choice is yours, of course, but reading this, nothing actually changes in practice, but is more about a moral issue. This time, there is no choice. It is consent, or switch to another application.

Telegram
Telegram was also founded several years, read 2013, ago, but seems to be gaining popularity, especially after Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp. The two brothers Nikolay and Pavel Doerov, who are also founders of the Russian network VK, designed the app. Telegram is registered as a US company and says it has nothing to do with Russian VK. This is doubted by some critics. Where the company's headquarters is located is something of a mystery. There are some known locations where the company has been sitting (temporarily), but it is all not very clear. This is no coincidence, as the company tries not to be required by governments to hand over user data.

What is special about this app is that you can send encrypted or self-destructing messages and files. Like WhatsApp, you can use end-to-end encryption, but this is not set by default. This is also immediately one of the criticisms of Telegram. The platform offers you many options to ensure your privacy, but you often have to set it up yourself, and the question is whether everyone who installs the app knows that in advance. So: if you use the app in the right way and believe what the company's owners claim, I think it's a pretty privacy-friendly app!

Signal
So until recently, I had never heard of Signal, but more and more people, including Tesla owner Elon Musk, are using the platform. The app has an indirect history since 2010, but was released for Android devices in 2015 under the name ‘Signal’. A year later, the app also became available for iOS users. What I did find interesting is that Brian Action, co-founder of WhatsApp and since 2018 backer of the new Signal Foundation, is the company that founded Signal.

Signal also uses end-to-end encryption. Their encryption, the Signal Protocol, is also used by WhatsApp. Furthermore, there is no connection with marketers and therefore no advertising. The difference with Telegram, from what I have read, is that that end-to-end encryption is there by default, so you don't have to consciously choose it, and that the founders/company is a bit more transparent about their work.

Because Elon Musk tweeted ‘Use Signal’ and because of the announcement of WhatsApp's new terms of use, Signal gained 25 million new users within three days in January, and who knows how much this will grow in the coming time.

I find it a tricky issue after finding all this. On the one hand, I wonder how much I mind if WhatsApp/Facebook or other companies have my ‘impersonal’ data, but I do wonder, if this is then the beginning of something bigger, which at some point means you ‘can't go back’ and your privacy sharing becomes a prerequisite for using platforms. Besides, I have had WhatsApp for so long that it would be quite difficult for me to switch, especially since many people around me will still continue to use WhatsApp. I think Telegram is sort of an in-between option between WhatsApp and Signal, which makes me more likely to choose Signal, because all that is nice. This brings me straight to the next and final point: since we also want to be as inclusive as possible in terms of platforms, we decided to create a Signal group for announcements, see how this goes and evaluate this plan after a while.

I'm very curious to know what you guys think about these things, so please do share in the ‘DWARS A'dam - Chat Group’ I would say!