Messengers for paranoids

Telegram, Wickr and other secure WhatsApp alternatives

On February 20, Facebook announced the purchase of the popular instant messenger WhatsApp. After it turned out that along with employees and infrastructure, Mark Zuckerberg’s company also acquired data on users of the popular application, the latter began to migrate en masse to more secure solutions from competitors.

In this regard, TJournal decided to understand the market of instant messengers that care about the privacy of correspondence.

Telegram

Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone

The owners of the Telegram messenger benefited most from the tarnished reputation of WhatsApp (many users did not want their data to go to Facebook) and its many-hour fall two days after the sale. It immediately shot to the top of the world's app store charts, and on February 23 it was downloaded almost 5 million times.

4.95 million people signed up for Telegram today. Telegram is #1 most downloaded iPhone app in 48 countries. To the bad news...

— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) February 24, 2014

The answer to the question of why Telegram hit the jackpot largely lies on the surface. Despite the fact that the application was initially announced as a test of the MTProto protocol and has not yet managed to acquire at least a decent set of functions, in the “year of Snowden” its creators focused most of all on security.

The most effective PR move in this regard was certainly the bold proposal of Pavel Durov to hack his personal correspondence on Telegram for 200 thousand dollars, announced on December 17, 2013. Even if some hacker managed to find a hole in the protocol itself and get the entire amount, it would still benefit the messenger: after eliminating the vulnerability, it would become even safer in the eyes of users.

At the same time, Telegram itself, in a sense, simply did not interfere with its own success. The application performs its basic functions flawlessly: it looks cleaner and neater than WhatsApp, and it also works noticeably faster, while remaining undemanding to network quality. It was not for nothing that Jan Koum became nervous in mid-August 2013. What stops many from switching to Telegram is its small user base (“All my friends are on WhatsApp, but here are two and a half people!”) and the lack of some functions: for example, sending voice messages.

Silent Text

Platforms: iOS, Android

Another reason for Telegram’s success was the fact that its competitors are, to put it mildly, unfriendly. For example, the free application of the American messenger Silent Text first of all asks you to enter a certain “activation code”, the purpose of which can only be found out by visiting the Silent Circle company website .

It also turns out that Silent Circle is not only not friendly, but also not cheap. A subscription to Silent Circle Mobile costs about $10 per month or $100 per year. For this money, the user receives cryptographic protection for the transmission of voice, video, text messages and files up to 100 megabytes.

Silent Circle can not only encrypt messages via the SCIMP protocol of its own design, but also recall those already sent at the request of the user, erasing all traces of their existence. In the application, you can set the time after which an open message will be deleted from the recipient's device. However, the authors do not guarantee forwarding protection or even screenshot protection: therefore, messages must still be sent to a trusted person.

Threema

Platforms: iOS, Android

A truly worthy competitor to Telegram is the Swiss messenger Threema . You need to pay $2 once for it, but it pays much more attention to the security of correspondence. For example, when visiting an app for the first time, the user needs to swipe the screen to generate a unique ID.

To be safe, Threema authors recommend adding new contacts when meeting by scanning a QR code with an identifier from a friend’s screen. Then they will be assigned the maximum verification level. If you wish, you can also use less reliable methods: synchronize contacts or enter the ID manually, transmitting it through unsecured channels.

Not inferior to Telegram in design, laconic and stylish, Threema is not far behind in terms of feel and speed. Of course, the authors of the application guarantee that all messages are encrypted directly on the device, and only the recipient and no one else can read them.

Immediately after the news of the sale of WhatsApp, Threema's user base doubled : of the 200 thousand new users, 80% were residents of Germany. What prevents the Swiss company from achieving the same growth rate as Telegram is its $2 price tag and an excessive level of security for most people.

Confide

Platforms: iOS

Confide is another nice and free messenger with declared encryption, which, unlike Threema, takes a step in a really interesting direction: the message comes to the recipient in the form of several lines of rectangles that open only when the user hovers his finger over them. Thus, the full text of the message is never displayed on the screen.

If the recipient nevertheless tries to take a screenshot, he will be automatically thrown into the contact list, and the message itself will be immediately deleted. At the same time, the sender will receive a signal that an attempt has been made to “remove” his message. Moreover, Confide does not store messages as such: they disappear after being read anyway.

S.J.

Platforms: iOS

Another “extreme” encrypted messenger is SJ (short for Safety Jabber). Its price in the App Store at the time of writing is 1,690 rubles. For this money, the developer offers a truly uncompromising crypto messenger in which the user can independently choose key pairs when sending messages.

Messages in SJ are encoded using the OpenPGP algorithm, and the contact list is encoded using the less secure AES. At the same time, in the application you can also communicate through any other services that support Jabber, but without reliable encryption.

Despite its impressive price, the SJ application looks, to put it mildly, clumsy. It still has not received a flat design in the style of iOS 7. However, the audience of this messenger obviously does not pay for the appearance.

Wickr and TigerText

Platforms: iOS, Android

The main page of the official Wickr website greets visitors with a quote from CNET: “Wickr is a crypto app for iPhone that a 3-year-old can use.” In practice, Wickr is noticeably inferior in both simplicity and design to both Telegram and Threema. In addition, it is alreadyavailable for Android.

Wickr markets itself as an app that leaves no trace. It destroys your messages not only on users’ smartphones, but also on servers. In addition, the program itself has a complete and final erasure function, after which messages cannot be restored even by special means.

Wickr provides encrypted transmission of almost all types of content, including images, audio and video. It prevents messages or content from being copied or forwarded to third parties, and prevents screenshots from being taken. The authors promise military-level encryption.

Wickr also has a “step-brother” - the very similar, but slightly less popular application TigerText . It has a much more attractive design (without too much red and tacky graphic elements). TigerText can also delete messages from the recipient’s smartphone and the server without leaving a trace.

Heml.is

Platforms: iOS, Android

The release of Heml.is has not yet taken place, but it cannot be ignored, if only because of how loudly it announced itself. While many similar projects fail on various crowdfunding platforms, this one took 36 hours to raise the required amount in July 2013.

The man behind Heml.is is one of the founders of the famous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde. The authors of the application stated that they will use the XMPP (Jabber) protocol and strong PGP encryption.

In addition to security from any surveillance, the creators of Heml.is also focus on high-quality design. It’s hard to argue with them on this score: the screenshots of the application on the site resemble those that Apple cites as an example at its presentations.

But it’s better, of course, to stock up on milk and candles,
Vadim Elistratov,
TJournal

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