Today, there are dozens of instant messaging apps that one can turn to, but the most popular ones are WhatsApp and Telegram. In fact, when matters of security and privacy come into play, these two are the most talked about, if not the less popular Signal app.
In a bid to determine which of these two is the best when it comes to matters of privacy and security of your messages, we have put them head-to-head in this article and if you are still split between WhatsApp and Telegram, well, read on.
End to end encryption
You’ve probably heard of end to end encryption. This technology is being adopted by many apps that intend to offer their users the most secure chatting environment. For a long time, Telegram was known to be the king of privacy, but this was before WhatsApp jumped onto this same bandwagon with a similar application of privacy measures.
Both platforms have implemented the end to end encryption technology, but it works differently in each case. For WhatsApp users, the tech giant brought this feature on board last year, where all forms of communication are protected from intrusion by third parties. In fact, the Facebook-owned app says that the company itself cannot gain access to your messages or calls no matter what.
According to WhatsApp, the use of end to end encryption means that any form of communication that takes place between users of the app, be it via a one to one chat or group chat, is protected by this technology. When you send your friend a message, your phone holds the encryption key while the phone of your friend has the decryption key.
When the message is on transit, there’s no way one can decrypt the contents of the message. Apparently, what ideally happens is that the message is somehow scrambled while being transmitted, which means that even if a third party can get hold of it, determining what it actually says won’t be possible. It’s only after the message reaches its destination that it changes into characters that can be read and understood.
As noted, this encryption is not just limited to messages, but also all voice calls, video calls and basically any forms of communication that take place via WhatsApp. If anything, this is not different from what happens on Telegram. Here, the messages are also encrypted from the sender’s device and can only be decrypted when they reach the recipient’s handset.
The only major difference between WhatsApp and Telegram as far as privacy and security is concerned is how they implement the end to end encryption technology. While WhatsApp users can be confident that whenever they send messages on the app nothing can come in between, those using Telegram have to remember to make this possible.
On WhatsApp, all communications are protected by this encryption technology by default, but on Telegram, not all communications are encrypted. Instead, one has to launch a Secret chat in order to be guaranteed that the messages being exchanged are encrypted. This means that if you don’t start a Secret chat, your messages are not private at all and thus can be intercepted.
This, if anything, is what makes WhatsApp a much more trusted platform in terms of privacy and security when compared to Telegram. In addition, the Facebook-owned app also offers more communication channels as compared to its counterpart, among them video calls, yet Telegram is only limited to messaging and voice calls.