While we're talking about Facebook, it's worth noting that the company's Messenger app isn't the safest place to keep your conversations. The encryption is just as strong, and while it isn't as cleanly stripped of extraneous features as Signal, that massive user base makes it easy to reach almost anyone in your contact list. And you know, that's OK-WhatsApp really is the next-best option to Signal. Getting all of them to switch to Signal is highly unlikely. Still, if you use WhatsApp, chances are you already know a lot of other people who are using it. Even though the content of your WhatsApp messages are encrypted, Facebook can still extract metadata from your habits, like who you're talking to and how frequently. That alone may steer away those who feel Facebook already knows too much about us. First, it's owned by Facebook, a company whose primary interest is in collecting information about you to sell you ads. But WhatsApp raises a few concerns that Signal doesn't. It's true, the Facebook-owned messaging app has over a billion users, offers most of the same features, and even employs Signal's encryption to keep chats private.

Yes, this list of features sounds a lot like WhatsApp. It has strong encryption, it's free, it works on every mobile platform, and the developers are committed to keeping it simple and fast by not mucking up the experience with ads, web-tracking, stickers, or animated poop emoji. There's one messaging app we should all be using: Signal.

That way, everyone can just pick up their phones and shoot a message to anyone without hesitation. Rather than just chugging along with a dozen chat apps, letting your notifications pile up, it's time to pick one messaging app and get all of your friends on board. We could stick to SMS, but it's pretty limited compared to other options, and it has some security holes. As conversations can bounce between Snapchat, iMessage, Skype, Instagram, Twitter, and Hangouts/Allo or whatever Google's latest attempt at messaging is, they're rendered confusing and unsearchable. You'd be lucky if they got back to you by midnight.Īll of this illustrates a plain truth. You can't go back and look at the message since Snapchat messages have a short shelf life, so you send a text, but your friend has already proven to be an unreliable texter. So, you move the conversation over to Snapchat, decide to meet up at 10:30, but then you close the app and can't remember if you agreed on meeting at Hannegan's or that poppin' new brewery downtown. You text a friend to finalize plans, anxiously awaiting their reply, only to get a message from them on Snapchat to say your latest story was hilarious.

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