Security for everyone

Whatsapp Privacy Issue and Comparison with Telegram and Signal

SecurityForEveryone

Security for Everyone

24/Jan/21

 

Whatsapp recently updated its privacy policy. It was about sharing collected information with Facebook. If you are living in Europe, this situation is not valid for you. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will protect your personal data. But if you are living outside of Europe, Whatsapp made it compulsory to agree to the terms. Most people believed that Facebook would be able to read our message content, but it was not the case. They just wanted to share the data listed below for improving their targeted advertising model. Since 2016 they have been sharing this content. Due to regularizations in data privacy lately, users should agree about their data sharing.

 

Whatsapp vs. Telegram vs. Signal

We are sharing the comparison of the three most popular messaging apps.

Whatsapp uses end to end (E2E) encryption for communication as well as Signal. Telegram uses E2E in secret chats. The normal chat feature is not E2E encrypted in Telegram.

The Signal is fully open-source. You can check how it is implemented. Telegram is not fully open-source. Whatsapp is not open-source at all.

Signal and Telegram have self-destruction messages, while Whatsapp does not.

Data collected by Whatsapp:

  • Device ID
  • User ID
  • IP Address
  • Advertising Data
  • Purchase History
  • Coarse Location
  • Phone Number
  • Email Address
  • Contacts
  • Product Interaction
  • Crash Data
  • Performance Data
  • Diagnostic Data
  • Payment Info
  • Customer Support
  • Product Interaction
  • Usage Time

 

Data collected by Telegram:

  • Contact Info
  • Contacts
  • User ID

 

Data collected by Signal:

  • Phone Number

 

Conclusion

Firms that have messaging applications usually deal with advertising firms to make money. Nobody can interfere with your communication and read your messages. For our daily usage, all of the apps are safe. But if you are going to talk about critical issues related to national security, we recommend that you do not use these applications. Rules of companies may vary when it comes to national security.

 

cyber security services for everyone one. Free security tools, continuous vulnerability scanning and many more.
Try it yourself,
control security posture