What are the differences between Whatsapp, Signal and Telegram?

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Let's go back to talking about messaging applications, lately in fact we haven't talked about anything else given the recent decision Of Whatsapp to force users outside Europe to share with Half their data (decision now postponed in mid-May). And we have collected a few curious questions from around the web, technical or otherwise. We will therefore try to make a precise, clear and as least complex summary as possible. What are the differences between Whatsapp, Signal and Telegram? Who is the safest?

Update March 15, 2024: since we are talking about these applications we would like to tell you that there is a Le Alternative community both on Telegram what up Signal!

We believe a premise is fundamental. There is a lot of confusion between offered services, privacy, safety And anonymity. The reason why it is not easy to give a global definition on which everyone agrees in our opinion is precisely this: everyone is interested in something different and everyone gives their own level of judgment based on the objective they have set for themselves. Those who love anonymity may not love it too much Signal because he asks for a phone number to sign up, who wants all his messages to be instead end-to-end encrypted does not recommend Telegram. In short, every application has strengths and weaknesses and today we will try to clarify things a little.

Summary table for those in a hurry

Summary for those in a hurry

• Whatsapp is a big no mainly for two reasons: his source code it's closed and no one can control what actually happens. Its owner is Half a company that earns mainly through advertising and user profiling ^{1 2 3}
• Telegram It's a great compromise. End-to-end encrypted chats are not active by default, however it offers a vast range of services that other applications only dream of. You can use anonymously with external users without giving out your mobile number
• Signal it's a project Open source complete with some advantages and some defects. All its chats and groups are end-to-end encrypted, but its functions are a bit bare-bones for now especially when compared to WhatsApp and Telegram. You can use anonymously with external users without giving out your mobile number

What are the differences between Whatsapp, Signal and Telegram?

Brief summary of the complex words that you can find in the article:

• End-to-end encryption, only you can read the contents of the messages.
• Open source or open code, it means that the source code it is available to everyone and anyone can check whether what is said is true.
• Closed source or closed code, it means that the source code is closed. You can only rely on what is said and no one can control it.
• Metadata, they are not the content of the chat but everything around it. What time did you log in, what time did you write to someone, for how long and so on.
• Audits, is an independent evaluation made to objectively judge whether what is assured is true.

Whatsapp

Let's start with Whatsapp, the application we all know. Half, the owner of Whatsapp, says that all conversations are encrypted end-to-end using the protocol Signal ⁴. However, the application is closed source, no one can check that this is entirely true. Furthermore Whatsapp collects your address book, conversation metadata and so much more ^{5 6}. He would like to pass this information on to Half to advertise it, and that's what will happen outside the EU. Half furthermore, it is a company that literally lives on advertising ^{1 2 3 7}. Do you really trust a company that is only blocked from its true intentions thanks to European laws?

Whatsapp is a big no

Summing up with the four key points we talked about at the beginning: the functionality they are very limited compared to Telegram.

L'anonymity does not exist because to talk to a contact you need their phone number and it is also mandatory to share with Whatsapp your address book (you can get around this problem with OpenContacts).

There privacy is not fully protected as Half it is not exactly the most attentive company to user privacy ⁸.
There safety only they know it, all their applications are closed source so no one can know how encryption really works. The backup of by default it is saved unencrypted on Google Drive and we are really curious to know how many activate the End-to-end encryption for backups.

Telegram

Many doubts have been raised about Telegram, let's try to summarize them. Telegram it is the only messaging application that has its own apps for Android and for iOS Open source and with reproducible builds ⁹. One of the biggest criticisms that is made most is that it cannot be trusted Telegram seen the source code of your server Not And Open source.

That's true, however it's important to say, unlike apps, there is no way to check that the code on the server is exactly the one released. So even if the code were released tomorrow it would not guarantee anything. It's not true that it's a Russian app as we often hear, its founder is Russian but there are no Telegram servers in Russia. Furthermore, all data of those who register in Europe is saved in the Netherlands ¹⁰. Telegram it doesn't have the End-to-end encryption enabled by default, it must be activated on the individual chat when you want to use it. Be careful, this does not mean, as we have read from time to time, that "the data on Telegram they are saved in clear." It means they are encrypted but they have the key Telegram. Let's add that second Telegram they can only access the data by coordinating different requests to different states because the data is "broken up" on different servers.

Telegram is a good compromise

Having everything in the cloud has pros and cons. The pros are before the eyes of everyone who uses it: bot, groups And channels always synchronized. All conversations are archived and can be recovered without problems or difficulties. Can this be considered a good compromise? In our opinion, yes as of today Telegram does not use the data or metadata for advertising profiling and uses only its own servers to work without having to rely on Amazon or other big tech to survive. For truly private messages you can activate the secret chat.

In summary: the functionality they are light years ahead of their competitors, we are talking about another world. Telegram It requires a phone number to register however It is not mandatory to share the address book, you can hide your phone number from everyone and you can talk to outsiders using only a nickname.
So lanonymity, at least at the level of chatting with strangers, is guaranteed.

As for the privacy: our data is not used for advertising profiling however the point 8.2 of their privacy is unclear: “We may share your personal data with: our parent company, Telegram Group Inc, located in the British Virgin Islands; and Telegram FZ-LLC, a group member located in Dubai, to help provide, improve and support our Services.” ¹¹.

There safety on secret chats has been validated by an independent audit in 2015 and reassures that these are truly secret ¹². A 2021 study confirmed the safety of his protocol MTProto 2.0 ¹³. Two contests were also held by 200.000$ and from 300.000$ for whoever cracked their encryption, there were no winners either way ¹⁴.

When you come in Telegram other users will be notified that you have signed up.

Signal

Another application that is talked about a lot is Signal. Unlike Telegram, Signal it also has the source code of the server Open source. This is very important but as we have already said no one can confirm that the one online is actually the one released although there is no reason to doubt it. News recently came out that uses Google servers: it is true but this does not affect its security in any way as the encryption used is very strong and has been validated by numerous experts and independent audits ^{15 16}. Furthermore, it does not only use Google but also other cloud services to function such as Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure ¹⁷. Everything that goes up here is encrypted so, and we repeat again, there is no security problem in this sense.

It has always also had the approval of Snowden ¹⁸.

However, using third-party servers is a potential problem for an application anti-system. If tomorrow Google unplugged Signal it couldn't work and there actually have been some potential problems in the past ^{19 20}.
Finally, for some time now it has been offering i encrypted groups end-to-end (up to 1000 people) and also the video calls end-to-end encrypted.

Signal is great for privacy

In summary: it is a perfect application for those who are looking privacy as that's all end-to-end encrypted and the only data they have in hand are the account creation date and the date of last use ²¹. According to Signal, no one, not even the developers, can know the messages, i groups you are registered with, i contacts nor anything else.

From version 7.0 it is possible to add users by simply giving a username and without disclosing their telephone number ²².

THE offered services they are quite limited, the safety but as we said it is quite high.

When you come in Signal other users will be notified that you have signed up.

What are the differences between Whatsapp, Signal and Telegram?

In short, as we have seen, they are three very different applications. It is almost impossible to say that 'x' is better in every way than another so be wary regardless of who says it. There are other applications like Threema and how Element of which we have already talked but which we do not address in this article so as not to create further confusion. Let's talk about these three applications because they are the most used, Telegram has recently exceeded 700 million active users ²³, Signal instead reached 50 million downloads ²⁴.

As we have already said in the past in our opinion Telegram And Signal there are two applications complementary. They can very well be used together because they have two different purposes and offer two, in fact, different services. Here you are what are the differences between Whatsapp, Signal and Telegram.

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