Even though Wickr is good also, the only option is for messages to auto-destruct. The other app I'm looking at is Wire, it's FOSS which is good. I wish that along with phone number, Signal implemented a user ID method of signup like Threema. I did not know that Threema predates Signal.

The protocol is open and elegantly written, and I personally have a lot of faith/trust in its author, Moxie Marlinspike. Had signal been around, I may have chosen it instead. I did look at a couple of others, but don't remember what they were or whether they even still exist. So there weren't a whole lot of options out there to choose from. This was years ago, before TextSecure (which later became the signal app) and telegram became a thing. Have you looked into the apps I mentioned? But now I'd like to know why the app needs my contacts, and what else it might do with that information. Another example: many apps ask for access to my contacts. One example: even though Whatsapp and Signal use the same protocol for encryption (so on one level they are equally secure), but they handle metadata differently. Since there are so many apps and protocols, I wanted to see if someone here had looked into them and made conclusions about which were better than others. I came across a discussion online and started thinking about the various app and their implementations.

To have a better understanding of these apps (and other apps that I use in general). What protocol do the people you want to contact use? I can research messaging apps for weeks, but if the person I need to contact insists on an app because it has the best emoticons, then I wasted my time.Ĭurrently I'm only researching and wanting to figure out which app is actually most secure/private, from a technical or implementation perspective.

Wickr me vs wire