Comparing Signal, Telegram, And WhatsApp Privacy Security

Ilustrasi Telegram (Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash)

JAKARTA - WhatsApp is the most popular messaging application in the world. Has more than 2 billion daily users who use its services. Purchased by Facebook in 2014, this application service is popular thanks to its end-to-end encryption security support.

It's just that, WhatsApp's popularity is in danger of collapsing. The new privacy policy announced by the company on January 4 is considered to threaten data security and user privacy.

Coupled with the tweets of the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, which successfully ravaged netizens, investors, and many tech observers. It made Signal get a surge in daily users until it finally ranked 1st in the App Store as the most downloaded application - above Telegram and WhatsApp.

“Use Signal,” tweeted Elon Musk on Thursday, January 7th.

Until now, the exodus wave of WhatsApp users towards Signal and Telegram is still ongoing. On the other hand, Sputnik News found that the number of WhatsApp application users continued to decline after the new privacy policy was announced.

The question is, is the Signal application really safe as indicated by the events above?

Signal Application Security System

Once again, Brian Acton, the founder of WhatsApp, is across the road from Facebook. After selling the app that made him a billionaire to Facebook, Brian founded Signal Messenger and Signal Foundation.

Both are Brian products that aim to provide a more private and secure digital messaging ecosystem. Just like WhatsApp, the Signal application uses end-to-end encryption. This means that no third party can access the data or information of each user.

Signal's Privacy Policy indicates that the application only uses a phone number as a form of account verification. After that, the platform will pay no attention to user accounts. For contact integration, the application will send a phone number that has gone through a cryptographic process.

Unlike WhatsApp, every contact and user data will not be stored on the application server. In addition, Signal has many security features. Examples include screen security to prevent application displays from appearing in floating windows. So that other people will not be able to see the user's messages.

Users can also add a registration PIN for additional security. Thanks to this high security, Signal only allows backing up data manually - both on Android and iOS.

Telegram

Telegram has long been one of WhatsApp's strong competitors. Even before WA's new privacy policy was created.

In 2017, Telegram was popular in Indonesia. The article is that the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information pointed out that the platform for sending messages is a forum for the spread of radicalism, terrorism and hate speech. So that the government blocked Telegram.

The block is only temporary. And now, users can freely take advantage of application services developed by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov.

When the author reads Telegram's Privacy Policy, the platform turns out to only collect phone and contact data when the user is connected. In addition, the application is also free to access the user's account name and profile photo.

Based on the company's claims, any data collected will not be used to serve targeted advertisements. In addition, the security protocol used is different from WA and Signal. Telegram uses a client-to-server security protocol.

This means that technically, anyone who can access the Telegram server can read the messages you send. To anticipate this, Telegram implements a moderator in the application and an automatic algorithm. Its function is to prevent spam and abuse on the platform.

WhatsApp Security

The new Privacy Policy, which the company will implement on February 8, is expected to change the face of WhatsApp. The results of reading the New Privacy Policy, the author captures several points that are considered crucial for the security of user data.

The types of data and information that the company will collect include account information - including profile names and photos, user messages (including messages that have failed to be sent and re-sent media), contact data (saved contacts, groups and call logs), WhatsApp status information, as well as transaction and payment data.

In addition, based on information in the new privacy policy, the application will also collect data about the device. Examples include device types, network information, location, cookies, application log information, data and power consumption.