If they change whatsapp im moving to telegram end of story.
You can start at, for example:
- https://account.conversations.im/ (8€/year)
- https://quicksy.im/ (free account)
I want to like Signal but it's kind of the worst of both worlds for me. Since they absolutely refuse to allow for easy modification of the client it means that I'm stuck with their crappy Electron app on the desktop that lacks some basic features (like being able to select the spellchecking language for instance). I can't script anything, migrating conversation histories between devices is messy and complicated etc... And of course on top of that it easily swallows half a GB of RAM to do all that.
On the other hand if I put myself into a random user's shoes it doesn't "just work" like WhatsApp does. I don't have a web browser client that I can use from anywhere. It doesn't have stickers and stuff like that that seems to be popular on WhatsApp.
It's basically a good crypto library with a terrible UI around it.
In my experience (after trying it a few times every year for the last few years), even its backend platform is unreliable and slow. So I'd call it as "It's basically a good crypto library with a terrible UI and a flakey backend behind it."
Use Signal if you absolutely need end to end encryption, extremely secure chat, and no way to use it outside of your phone being on and connected to the Internet.
Use Telegram if you want chat. Don't except high levels of security and for the average user who already uses Facebook Messenger and Instagram, it's good enough.
The number one feature I wish WhatsApp (and Signal) would adopt. I don't care for either service, but that would at least allow me or my partner to occasionally participate in group chats without resorting to buying an Android or IOS smartphone.
People just assume everyone under 60 has WhatsApp in some countries (the Netherlands being one of them), and it borders on being a requirement to function socially.
My partner went to a course for pregnant women, and during the first meeting it was agreed that all communication outside of the meetings would go via WhatsApp, but the course leader would send emails to my partner for changes in scheduling. (My partner has no smartphone, and doesn't want one either, but she owns a modern laptop and works in IT.) So basically any knowledge and questions shared in the group are invisible to her.
This situation is likely to come up again and again as we start raising a child, and all we can do to remedy it is buy a smartphone with one of the pre-approved operating systems, and join the social graph of Facebook…
You can use Signal on Desktop without your phone being online. (This does not work with WhatsApp.)
Signal on the other hand has a quite poor desktop app and I find their mobile app a little slow. It usually takes more time for me to open a conversation than with Telegram.
Telegrams UX is leagues beyond Signal and good enough that I've gotten my entire social circle to switch.
This is in contrast to e.g. Wire, [a near-future release of] Riot.im / Matrix.org, and (AFAICT) Viber, which do end-to-end encryption by default and cross-device without compromises. The messaging providers don't know anything about your chats there. This is the way it should be.
There are also complaints about Telegram's "weird" cryptography, although nobody's ever shown anything close to a practical attack yet, and definitely not for the current version of their custom MTProto protocol. The core problem is really in their insecure-by-default service offering.
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/18197/why-shoul...