Last update: May 22, 2020
Español - Italiano
Introduction
This article analyses the security and confidentiality features of the most commonly used communication services or applications.
Note: the comparison is made between WhatsApp (the most widespread 1.6 billion users), Telegram (the most secure and widespread 400 million users), Signal and Wire (the most secure and confidential) according to world statistics. A comparison in terms of functionality is available at this address.
Remark: for any communication…

The decision is seemingly a trade-off for usability across multiple devices.

WhatsApp, Signal e Telegram promettono tutte la stessa cosa: comunicazioni sicure. Ma ci possiamo fidare?

It has recently come to the attention of the PrivacyTools team that Wire, the popular end-to-end encryption messaging platform had been sold or moved to a US company. After a week of questioning, Wire finally confirmed they had changed holding companies and would now be a US based company in

It's fine, but you should know that pretty much everything Moxie and Signal talk about contrast sharply with Wire. For instance: last I checked, Wire stores your entire social graph on their servers in a database --- effectively forever, Wire stores a plaintext log of everyone you've communicated with.

The decision is seemingly a trade-off for usability across multiple devices.

Documenting here Wire's restrictions on CORS(Cross-Origin Resource Sharing). Without this change, building on top of Wire's open source project is not an option. This is a continuation of g...

Earlier this year, we started open sourcing Wire server code under the AGPL license. Today, the code necessary to run Wire servers is…

Kudelski Security and X-41 D-Sec have published application-level security audits of Wire’s iOS, Android, web application, and calling…

People say things like this about Signal but tend not to acknowledge why Signal is like that. Look at how Signal handles something as basic as user profiles, then compare it to how other applications address the same problems. I'll recommend Wire alongside WhatsApp any day, but keep in mind that Wire's servers apparently have a record of every conversation that has occurred between any two Wire users (not the content, mind you, just the link).

This is why I disagree with Matthew Green, do not think we've totally figured out secure messaging yet and that they're all "so good", and think that if you're serious about privacy --- enough to have strong opinions about WhatsApp vs. Signal, for instance --- that you should use multiple messengers:

• a "tier 1" secure messaging app like Signal that makes all reasonable tradeoffs in favor of security and privacy regardless of the UX cost, used when possible and for sensitive conversations.

• a "tier 2" secure messaging app like WhatsApp or Wire as your "daily messenger".

• "tier 3" messenger applications (including email) that you use mostly to rendezvous to a real messenger application.

In this scheme you can start to understand Signal as not just a decent messenger application with best-in-class security and privacy, but also as a laboratory for future privacy enhancements to messaging.

Wire server code: https://github.com/wireapp/wire-server

The source code of the server components is licensed under AGPL and can be used according to those terms unless otherwise specified for third-party components.

In the longer term future there will be a self-hosted version of Wire that optionally federates with the main Wire cloud.