Top 10 Most Secure Messaging Apps – The Best Platforms & Solutions Part - 4

10. Line   

Line is a free, secure messaging app available for a variety of smartphone devices and PC. This secure platform was developed by a team of Japanese engineers as a way to communicate after the Tōhoku earthquake that destroyed the area in 2011. The telecommunications infrastructure was damaged throughout the country, so the only solution for communication was through Internet-connected means. Shortly after this messaging app was built, LINE added end-to-end encryption to boost privacy and called the feature “Letter Sealing”. All users can use it, but it must be turned on manually.     

Features  

• Letter Sealing   
• Over 10,000 Stickers of characters and celebrities   
• Follow official accounts of favorite artists, celebrities, brands, and TV shows for news and promotions   
• Share text, photos, and videos on Timeline   
• Add friends by the “Shake It!” function, when both people shake their devices close to one another to exchange contact information   
• Live Video    
• OpenChat- online space to meet new friends with similar interests based on app activity (only in Japan, Thailand, and Indonesia)    
• Cost: Free    

Number of Users: Over 700 million     

Most Secure App?    

After analyzing and comparing these ten secure messaging apps, we believe that Signal is the best one to choose. It is 100% open source, and they are funded by donations and grants instead of corporate money that is dependent on user- data. Since it was created by a group called Open Whisper Systems, is was written by and has the support of some of the world’s top experts on privacy and security. Their implementation has been reviewed by the most well-known security experts and cryptographers. The messaging protocol integrated into Signal is considered to be the most secure one out of anything on the market today, proven by the fact that other services use the app’s messaging protocol for their most secure modes, including Wire, Skype’s Private Conversations and Facebook Messenger’s Secret Conversations.     

Signal   

What About Whatsapp?   

As of January 7, 2021, Facebook updated its privacy policy, changing data-sharing practices for WhatsApp. The updated policy states that “WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, the other Facebook Companies. We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate.” Therefore, users must agree that Facebook can share their data with advertisers, as business conversations hosted with the social network might be readable and used by companies to target consumers. As a result, tech expert Elon Musk recommended users choose Signal, which is listed first in this post. If you are interested in building your own clone of WhatsApp after this news, follow this tutorial to get a chat messaging application up and running in 20 minutes, allowing you to define its security measures! Start a free chat trial now to build a WhatsApp clone.   

Need HIPAA Compliance for Healthcare Communications?   

Viable communication solutions between medical organizations and patients is a need that is taking off across the healthcare industry. In this field especially, messaging platforms must be secure and HIPAA compliant. After carefully researching this specific space, you can read our take on the top 10 secure healthcare messaging programs or review our list of the 34 best telemedicine apps.    

Didn't Find a Good Fit? Build Your App In-House   

We have mapped out the best apps above, but if that's not enough, you might want to build your own platform in-house. Check out Stream's Messaging API for more information about building your own secure communication solution in-house. Stream Chat was created to be the product on the market with the most amount of features, the highest scalability, and the quickest speed, so if you want to build your own secure messaging app and don't want to worry about your customers experiencing a seamless chat solution, you've come to the right place.    

Conclusion   

The lack of comprehensive privacy on older, big-name services has led to the development of the newer apps featured above with more features focused on security. Headlines about security breaches come out day after day in our digitally-connected world, so we are forced to become more cautious about the dangers of identity and data theft. In the online world, data privacy and security matters more than ever with the looming risks of being spied on or having your conversations shared without knowing about it. Therefore, choosing to use some of the most secure chat apps to communicate with friends, family, and coworkers protects you against any kind of malicious actor trying to steal your data.    

While all the secure apps mentioned in this article have end-to-end encrypted messaging, the ability to sync messages among a multitude of devices and platforms, and multi-mode communication (voice, text, video), each clearly has its strengths and weaknesses. Choosing which one to use can only be done by calculating which additional features are most important to you.