A research study done by Amnesty International revealed that the most secure existing messaging app is Facebook-owned WhatsApp, followed by Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime, and Telegram.
On the other hand, Microsoft’ Skype and Snapchat were slammed for using a weak encryption. Amnesty said “Skype has been a major target of government surveillance worldwide. Despite Microsoft’s strong policy commitment to human rights, it is still using a weak form of encryption on Skype.”
“Snapchat does not deploy end-to-end encryption and needs to do more to inform users about how the company is tackling threats to their rights – particularly as Snapchat’s ‘disappearing’ messages may give users a false sense of privacy,” they added.
In a recent interview during the WSJ.Live conference WhatsApp co-founders explained the messaging service will remain committed to user privacy. “We never asked our users for their names, for their genders, for their age or where they live, so it’s not like sitting on the wealth of information,” WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum said.
WhatsApp was highly appreciated when it announced default end-to-end encryption on its messaging platform in April; however it was criticized over its decision to share users’ phone number with its parent company Facebook, who bought it in 2014, to provide ‘relevant’ advertisements and friend suggestions.
In the interview WhatsApp co-founders explained that the term of services was updated to take advantage of Facebook’s spam-detection system.
According to Amnesty, “Facebook is doing the most to use encryption to respond to human rights threats, and is most transparent about the action it’s taking. WhatsApp is the only app where users are explicitly warned when end-to-end encryption is not applied to a particular chat, but Messenger does not apply end-to-end encryption as a default, and does not warn users that regular conversations use a weaker form of encryption.”
