The recent US security breach in which top government officials accidentally shared military plans with a journalist via the messaging app Signal, has many people wondering if their own private messages could be at risk. With that in mind, here’s a review of the major messaging services and their pros and cons.
Signal
Signal was not approved for government messaging in the US. Nonetheless, PC Mag chose the service as its “best overall” pick for 2025, because “All messages are secured with end-to-end encryption (E2EE)” (meaning that they’ve been turned into code that is unreadable to anyone without access to the decoding key).
The one negative according to PC Mag is that it requires a phone number for signup, but key benefits are that it allows group and private texting, conference audio and video calls, and has multi-platform functionality, plus it’s free and nonprofit owned, which some say means there’s no reason to harvest any user data. “The underlying technology of Signal is so successful it has been implemented by Google and Meta,” PC Mag says.
But it is the very free availability to millions that PC Mag likes so much, that presents “key dangers” for Director of Governmental Affairs and Advocacy at Internet Society, Callum Voge, who told Euronews: “Anyone in the world can create a Signal account,” meaning people can be inadvertently added to chats. Worse, “Signal is used on personal devices. That introduces the risk of Spyware.” Spyware, experts note, makes encryption pointless.
But unless someone is sharing super secret government war plans or private pics, the broad availability of Signal should make it a convenient choice for people who travel a lot.
iMessage
iMessage is also considered highly secure, and Inc. notes that it encrypts group chat messages individually, which “is technically more secure” than Signal’s approach. Apple also claim their encryption can withstand post-quantum cyber attacks.
So far so good, as long as you’re only contacting other people with iPhones, because iMessage is a closed-source, Apple-only system, which not only limits auditing and transparency but means it’s not so secure for texting between an iPhone and Android device. That’s because those messages rely on RCS or SMS which are not encrypted. That could be an issue for iPhone users who travel a lot in places where Android phones are popular – and that is most of the world. Android has a significantly larger market share than iOS, with Android accounting for around 70% of the global smartphone market, while iOS has around 27-29%. But unlike other services, iMessage is usable in China.
Some also argue that using iCloud to backup text conversations (without Advanced Data Protection) means Apple retains your messages on its servers and could turn them over to authorities if asked.
The same applies to WhatsApp. It is encrypted with the same protocol as Signal. But its Meta ownership is seen as a problem for some, because Meta retains metadata. “Neither consumer nor business WhatsApp protects intimate metadata — like contact list, who’s messaging whom, when, profile photo, etc. And, when compelled, like all companies that collect the data to begin with, they turn this important, revealing data over,” wrote Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation on X, of her competitors.
However, PC Mag points out WhatsApp has the world’s biggest user base, giving messengers are potentially an easy planet-wide contact book.
Telegram
Telegram does not encrypt messages at all, so conversations do not have end-to-end protection unless users themselves manually turn on “secret chats”. This makes it a vulnerable service, but nevertheless it is popular, with a user base that has grown by 31% since 2020. With 950 million monthly users and 45% of the global online population, it’s a choice that gives travellers a wide range of potential contacts, unless in China, where it is unavailable – but that also goes for WhatsApp and Signal.
When someone messages you for the first time, you'll see a detailed info page to help you spot scams and verify who contacted you. #TelegramTips pic.twitter.com/yO4YbuDBi8
— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) March 26, 2025
Despite recent bad press, Signal gets the thumbs up from most reviewers, with Inc. noting its recent high profile issues were down to human user errors, not problems with the product itself, and PC Mag rating it 4.5 out of 5, “outstanding.”
