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WhatsApp is changing its terms of use in a worrying way. Alternative messaging providers are reporting a big increase. Here we show you three possible alternatives to König WhatsApp. […]
Last week, Facebook, the company that owns the popular WhatsApp messenger, announced radical changes to its terms of use. These are changing especially with regard to the purpose of the data obtained, WhatsApp wants to share this with third-party companies. And even if a weaker form applies to Europe and Switzerland, thanks to data protection law, it’s time to think about alternative messengers. And this is obviously already happening. Providers like Threema or Signal have reported a huge increase in users in recent days, almost to the same extent as when WhatsApps was sucked into Facebook’s data octopus. Here we present three possible alternatives to WhatsApp: we will not go into the similarities (they can do the same anyway), but we will show you the first steps and what is different with these messengers. This is especially true in the area of privacy, both in terms of third-party providers / state / companies, and how they can disclose as little as possible to chat partners about the time and type of use. Note: The biggest challenge when switching messengers remains convincing colleagues – phlegmatism is the trump card here.
Alternative 1: Threema
First steps with Threema
When you start the application for the first time, you will be asked to create a key pair consisting of a private and a public key with several swipes of the finger. Perform all the swipe gestures one after the other until the status bar indicates that your key pair has been created.
You will then be asked to provide your cell phone number or email address. If you sync the contacts through your phone book, you will see that Threema will also list the contacts that you have only been in contact with by email so far.
Security levels
Now only contacts that have been synchronized by Threema using the public key can exchange encrypted messages.
In the communication path, the following occurs: a third key is calculated from the public key of a recipient and the private key of a sender (which is only on their device), which encrypts the message.
The recipient decrypts the message with their private key. This ensures that the content of the message is only available in encrypted form on servers. This is apparent from the orange contact status of your contacts. Also, messages are deleted from the server after a successful transmission, and contact lists and individual user groups do not even reach the server, they are managed on the respective mobile device. Therefore, it is important to have a backup (for groups) so that you can take them with you when you buy a new device. And last but not least: an additional PIN can be specified for particularly important chats, which is necessary to be able to see the dialogue. 5 wrong entries, and all chat will be deleted!
If you don’t want Threema to sync the contacts, you can add new contacts manually using the contact IDs, which actually represent the public key. Threema IDs can be found under contact names in the form of eight-digit numbers.
Green contacts are very safe
Now for the highlight: to be absolutely sure that the public key belongs to the desired person, you must meet this person once. Both Threema contacts should call out the cryptic QR code below the Threema app information symbol, which is only stored on the respective user’s device.
A QR code scanning app must be pre-installed on the Android device or iPhone. If there is no QR scanning app on your smartphone yet, Threema will suggest a corresponding app.
The mutual scanning of these codes takes place after both have touched the “scan ID” function and scan their codes one after another. In our practical test this worked quickly and easily.
Data protection against chat partners
Blue ticks, last in line and so on: who does not know these “social” problems with WhatsApp! Read receipts, “typed” messages can be disabled, online status is not a problem anyway.
Download for Android and iOS
Alternative 2: Signal
Another alternative known for its strong data protection is Signal. The messenger, perhaps a little less known in this country, is currently experiencing an explosion of users. This is because it has received the highest award: Edward Snowden declared that it was his favorite messenger who was absolutely trustworthy from a data protection point of view. Ditto for tech pioneer and Tesla founder Elon Musk.
Get started with Signal
The verification is well known through the phone number. Here, too, data protection is very important: in addition to the content of the message, the sender, that is, his number, is also encrypted or “hashed”, as it is called in technical jargon; the signal itself does not know. Although Signal can use the stored metadata to find out if a certain number is stored in Signal, it cannot find out who this number is chatting with or even its content, so it could not easily reveal it even when requested by law enforcement authorities. Screen locks, including PIN, aren’t a problem locally either.
You can also send “self-destructing” messages, which are removed from the sender and recipient after a period of your choice. The encryption algorithm is also open source: if a weakness is found somewhere, the “swarm intelligence” can pass it on to the provider.
Data protection towards chat partners
As with Threema, everything a chat partner can see can be turned off with Signal: tip indicators, read receipts, online status.
Support for
Cloud-based backups are also not possible for data protection reasons. You can only create and export an encrypted local backup to another smartphone. Download for Android and iOS
Alternative 3: Telegram
The best known WhatsApp alternative in the smartphone messaging sector is Telegram. A bit discredited due to dubious groups in relation to the current pandemic, this impressively demonstrates that the word of data protection has spread. Rather than show the individual advantages here, I’m referring to the great Telegram portrait of colleague Zellweger.
