Following, we will show you how you can distinguish good services from bad ones, and we will present a few alternatives to WhatsApp. Fortunately, there are quite a few alternatives to WhatsApp with the same functionality.

This has many users questioning how safe these services are, if they have trustworthy encryption, and ultimately, if their privacy is respected at all. For a scary example, if you have an Android phone, Google keeps a record of every place you have been by tracking you with GPS. Most services we use are able to collect an incredible amount of data about us. This is likely completely legal, as all Facebook users have agreed to this when clicking 'accept' on the terms of service. This was very publicly covered by the media recently. Facebook is harvesting user data not only for their own targeted advertising, but also to sell this data to third party companies, such as the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The answer is, of course, that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. Most people by now have moved to internet-based messaging services such as WhatsApp, but have you ever wondered how WhatsApp can be completely free (of cost) to use? Surely, the company behind it must have a lot of employees that manage their infrastructure? If you own a smartphone, you have probably figured out that paying a telephone company 0.10 CHF to send a text message is quite ludicrous.

Secure messaging apps comparison