What’s changed since our last article?

The short version: WhatsApp now belongs to Meta, and the concerns we raised back then have largely come true. Data sharing with Meta is a reality. Metadata – who’s talking to whom and when – feeds directly into Meta’s advertising ecosystem. End-to-end encryption for message content is still in place, but that doesn’t change the fact that Meta can build a remarkably detailed profile of its users without ever reading a single message.

Meanwhile, the messaging landscape has evolved. Signal has seen a massive surge in users. Telegram has grown too, but has also come under increasing scrutiny. And WhatsApp? WhatsApp is still the 800-pound gorilla – simply because “everyone else uses it.”

WhatsApp: Convenience at the cost of privacy

Let’s be honest: WhatsApp is convenient. The app is reliable, the interface is polished, and just about everyone has it installed. That’s both its biggest advantage and its biggest problem – because it makes switching so hard.

On the privacy front, nothing has improved since our last article. If anything, it’s gotten worse:

• Metadata collection: WhatsApp continues to collect extensive metadata – contact lists, communication patterns, location data, device information. All of this flows back to Meta.
• Contact upload: WhatsApp still uploads your entire address book to its servers – not just the numbers of WhatsApp users, but all of your contacts.
• Cloud backups: If you enable backups to Google Drive or iCloud, you’re effectively gutting end-to-end encryption. Those backups sit in the cloud either unencrypted or encrypted with a key Meta has access to.
• AI features: Meta is increasingly baking AI features into WhatsApp. How much context ends up on Meta’s servers remains murky at best.

The old saying still holds: “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”

Signal: The privacy champion

If you read our original article, you’re already familiar with Signal. The good news: Signal has consistently improved over the past few years without compromising its principles.

Signal is run by a nonprofit foundation and funded entirely by donations. There’s no ad-driven business model, no investors pushing for returns and no corporation lurking in the background. In today’s tech world, that’s almost radical.

What Signal gets right

• End-to-end encryption across the board: All messages, calls, video chats and even group calls are end-to-end encrypted. The underlying protocol is considered the gold standard – ironically, WhatsApp uses it too, just without the same privacy safeguards around it.
• Minimal data collection: Signal stores virtually no metadata. When served with a court order, Signal could only hand over two data points: the account creation date and the last connection time. That’s all there was.
• Sealed Sender: Even Signal’s own servers can’t see who’s sending a message to whom. The sender information is transmitted in encrypted form.
• Encrypted contact discovery: Signal matches contacts using hash values (as we described in our earlier article) and has since improved the system further with “Secure Value Recovery” and “Private Contact Discovery.”

The downside? Signal still has a smaller user base than WhatsApp. That means you’ll need to actively convince your contacts to switch. It takes effort – but it’s worth it.

Telegram: Proceed with caution

Telegram is often mentioned in the same breath as Signal when people talk about WhatsApp alternatives. That’s misleading, because from a privacy standpoint, Telegram is in a completely different league – and not the good one.

The biggest misconception

Many users believe Telegram is securely encrypted. It isn’t – at least not by default. Regular Telegram chats are not end-to-end encrypted. All standard one-on-one and group chats are stored in plain text on Telegram’s servers. Only the manually activated “Secret Chat” feature offers end-to-end encryption – and it only works between two people, not in groups.

On top of that, Telegram uses its own encryption protocol called MTProto, which has been repeatedly criticized by cryptography experts. Signal and WhatsApp both rely on the well-established Signal Protocol.

What Telegram does well – and what it doesn’t

Telegram excels at public channels, bots and large groups. As an organizational tool for communities, gaming groups or news channels, it has its place. But: For confidential, private communication, Telegram is the wrong choice.

There are also the recent legal issues surrounding Telegram founder Pavel Durov and questions about how cooperative Telegram is – or isn’t – with law enforcement. The situation remains murky and makes it hard to say with any confidence how safe your data is on Telegram’s servers in the long run.

Threema: The Swiss vault

We highlighted Threema in our previous article, and it still deserves a mention in 2026. This Swiss-made app charges a small one-time fee – and that’s its entire business model. No subscription, no ads, no selling your data.

Threema doesn’t require a phone number or email address to sign up. Address book syncing is optional and uses hash values. All chats are end-to-end encrypted, and the entire source code is now open source. If maximum privacy is your goal, Threema remains the most compelling option out there.

The comparison at a glance

Over to you

It’s been a few years since our original article on this topic. Some of you switched messengers back then; others didn’t. So we’re curious: Which messenger are you using today? Did you manage to break free from WhatsApp – or did you stay because the rest of your family and friends wouldn’t budge? Maybe you’re juggling multiple messengers at once?

And if you did make the switch: What was the tipping point? Was it a specific event, or did the decision build up over time?

We’d love to hear from you in the comments – and we promise not to forward them to Meta.