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Signal, WhatsApp And Telegram: Here's Which Secure Messaging App You Should Use


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Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram: Here's which secure messaging app you should use


Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram: Here's which secure messaging app you should use

If your choice of encrypted messaging app is a toss-up between Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp, do not waste your time with anything but Signal. This isn't about which one has cuter features, more bells and whistles or is the most convenient to use: It's purely about privacy. And if privacy's what you're after, nothing beats Signal.

You probably already know what happened. In a tweet heard 'round the world last January, tech mogul Elon Musk continued his feud with Facebook by advocating people drop its WhatsApp messenger and use Signal instead. Twitter's then-CEO Jack Dorsey retweeted Musk's call. Around the same time, right-wing social network Parler went dark following the Capitol attacks, while political boycotters fled Facebook and Twitter. It was the perfect storm -- the number of new users flocking to Signal and Telegram surged by tens of millions

Read more: Everything to know about Signal

The jolt also reignited security and privacy scrutiny over messaging apps more widely. Among the top players currently dominating download numbers, there are some commonalities. All are mobile apps available in the Google Play store and App Store that support cross-platform messaging, have group chat features, offer multifactor authentication and can be used to share files and multimedia. They all also provide encryption for texting, voice and video calls.

Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp use end-to-end encryption in some portion of their app, meaning that if an outside party intercepts your texts, they should be scrambled and unreadable. It also means that the exact content of your messages supposedly can't be viewed by employees of those companies when you are communicating with another private user. This prevents law enforcement, your mobile carrier and other snooping entities from being able to read your messages even when they intercept them (which happens more often than you might think). 

The privacy and security differences between Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp couldn't be bigger, though. Here's what you need to know about each of them. 

Getty/SOPA Images
  • Does not collect data, only your phone number
  • Free, no ads, funded by nonprofit Signal Foundation 
  • Fully open-source
  • Encryption: Signal Protocol

Signal is a typical one-tap install app that can be found in your normal marketplaces like Google Play and Apple's App Store and works just like the usual text-messaging app. It's an open-source development provided free of charge by the nonprofit Signal Foundation and has been famously used for years by high-profile privacy icons like Edward Snowden.

Signal's main function is that it can send -- to either an individual or a group -- fully encrypted text, video, audio and picture messages, after verifying your phone number and letting you independently verify other Signal users' identity. For a deeper dive into the potential pitfalls and limitations of encrypted messaging apps, CNET's Laura Hautala's explainer is a life-saver. 

When it comes to privacy, it's hard to beat Signal's offer. It doesn't store your user data. And beyond its encryption prowess, it gives you extended, onscreen privacy options, including app-specific locks, blank notification pop-ups, face-blurring antisurveillance tools and disappearing messages. 

Occasional bugs have proven that the tech is far from bulletproof, of course, but the overall arc of Signal's reputation and results have kept it at the top of every privacy-savvy person's list of identity protection tools. The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times (which also recommends WhatsApp) and The Wall Street Journal all recommend using Signal to contact their reporters safely. 

For years, the core privacy challenge for Signal lay not in its technology but in its wider adoption. Sending an encrypted Signal message is great, but if your recipient isn't using Signal, then your privacy may be nil. Think of it like the herd immunity created by vaccines, but for your messaging privacy. 

Now that Musk's and Dorsey's endorsements have sent a surge of users to get a privacy booster shot, however, that challenge may be a thing of the past. 

Getty/NurPhoto
  • Data linked to you: Name, phone number, contacts, user ID
  • Free, forthcoming Ad Platform and premium features, funded mainly by founder
  • Only partially open-source
  • Encryption: MTProto

Telegram falls somewhere in the middle of the privacy scale, and it stands apart from other messenger apps because of its efforts to create a social network-style environment. While it doesn't collect as much data as WhatsApp, it also doesn't offer encrypted group calls like WhatsApp, nor as much user data privacy and company transparency as Signal. Data collected by Telegram that could be linked to you includes your name, phone number, contact list and user ID. 

Telegram also collects your IP address, something else Signal doesn't do. And unlike Signal and WhatsApp, Telegram's one-to-one messages aren't encrypted by default. Rather, you have to turn them on in the app's settings. Telegram group messages also aren't encrypted. Researchers found that while some of Telegram's MTProto encryption scheme was open-source, some portions were not, so it's not completely clear what happens to your texts once they're in Telegram's servers. 

Telegram has seen several breaches. Some 42 million Telegram user IDs and phone numbers were exposed in March of 2020, thought to be the work of Iranian government officials. It would be the second massive breach linked to Iran, after 15 million Iranian users were exposed in 2016. A Telegram bug was exploited by Chinese authorities in 2019 during the Hong Kong protests. Then there was the deep-fake bot on Telegram that has been allowed to create forged nudes of women from regular pictures. Most recently, its GPS-enabled feature allowing you to find others near you has created obvious problems for privacy. 

I reached out to Telegram to find out whether there were any major security plans in the works for the app, and what its security priorities were after this latest user surge. I'll update this story when I hear back.

Angela Lang/CNET
  • Data linked to you: Too much to list (see below)
  • Free; business versions available for free, funded by Facebook
  • Not open-source, except for encryption
  • Encryption: Signal Protocol 

Let's be clear: There's a difference between security and privacy. Security is about safeguarding your data against unauthorized access, and privacy is about safeguarding your identity regardless of who has access to that data. 

On the security front, WhatsApp's encryption is the same as Signal's, and that encryption is secure. But that encryption protocol is one of the few open-source parts of WhatsApp, so we're being asked to trust WhatsApp more than we are Signal. WhatsApp's actual app and other infrastructure have also faced hacks, just as Telegram has. 

Jeff Bezos' phone was famously hacked in January of 2020 through a WhatsApp video message. In December of the same year, Texas' attorney general alleged -- though has not proven -- that Facebook and Google struck a back-room deal to reveal WhatsApp message content. A spyware vendor targeted a WhatsApp vulnerability with its software to hack 1,400 devices, resulting in a lawsuit from Facebook. WhatsApp's unencrypted cloud-based backup feature has long been considered a security risk by privacy experts and was one way the FBI got evidence on notorious political fixer Paul Manafort. To top it off, WhatsApp has also become known as a haven for scam artists and malware purveyors over the years (just as Telegram has attracted its own share of platform abuse, detailed above). 

Despite the hacks, it's not the security aspect that concerns me about WhatsApp as much as the privacy. I'm not eager for Facebook to have yet another piece of software installed on my phone from which it can cull still more behavioral data via an easy-to-use app with a pretty interface and more security than your regular messenger. 

When WhatsApp says it can't view the content of the encrypted messages you send to another WhatsApp user, what is doesn't say is that there's a laundry list of other data that it collects that could be linked to your identity: Your unique device ID, usage and advertising data, purchase history and financial information, physical location, phone number, your contact information and that of your list of contacts, what products you've interacted with, how often you use the app, and how it performs when you do. The list goes on. This is way more than Signal or Telegram. 

When I asked the company why users should settle for less data privacy, a WhatsApp spokesperson pointed out that it limits what it does with this user data, and that the data collection only applies to some users. For instance, financial transaction data collection would be relevant only to those WhatsApp users in Brazil, where the service is available. 

"We do not share your contacts with Facebook, and we cannot see your shared location," the WhatsApp spokesperson told CNET. 

"While most people use WhatsApp just to chat with friends and family, we've also begun to offer the ability for people to chat with businesses to get help or make a purchase, with health authorities to get information about COVID, with domestic violence support agencies, and with fact checkers to provide people with the ability to get accurate information," the spokesperson said. "As we've expanded our services, we continue to protect people's messages and limit the information we collect." 

Is WhatsApp more convenient than Signal and Telegram? Yes. Is it prettier? Sure. Is it just as secure? We won't know unless we see more of its source code. But is it more private? Not when it comes to how much data it collects comparatively. For real privacy, I'm sticking with Signal and I recommend you do the same. 


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.

Texas Sues Facebook Over Its Use Of Facial Recognition


Texas Sues Facebook Over Its Use of Facial Recognition


Texas Sues Facebook Over Its Use of Facial Recognition

Texas is suing Meta, the parent company of Facebook, over the social network's past use of facial recognition technology. The suit, filed Monday by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, accuses Facebook of violating the state's privacy laws by capturing biometric data on tens of millions of Texans without properly obtaining consent. 

"Facebook will no longer take advantage of people and their children with the intent to turn a profit at the expense of one's safety and well-being," said Paxton in a release. "This is yet another example of Big Tech's deceitful business practices and it must stop."

Facial recognition technology, which converts face scans into identifiable data, has become a growing privacy and civil rights concern. In November, Facebook said it would shut down its facial recognition system and delete the face scan data of more than 1 billion users. The company said the decision was spurred by societal concerns and regulatory uncertainty about facial recognition technology. 

The move marked a major shift away from the controversial technology that Facebook incorporated into features such as giving people the option to receive automatic notifications when they appear in photos and videos posted by others, or suggesting tags by using scans of previously uploaded photos to match people in new shots. 

By the time Facebook announced it would shutter its facial recognition system, the company had secretly exploited Texans and their personal information for more than a decade, the lawsuit alleges. 

"Little did users know that when they answered the simple question of who was in the photograph, they were helping to teach Facebook's facial-recognition technology to better map and recognize human faces for the benefits of Facebook's commercial endeavors -- and to the detriment of users' and nonusers' personal safety and security," the lawsuit states. 

Facial recognition technology could be abused by stalkers and criminals to gather information about a target or locate their social media accounts, the lawsuit points out. Governments have also use the technology to surveil people, and the technology has a harder time identifying minorities.

This isn't the first time Facebook has been accused of violating a state's privacy law. 

In February 2021, Facebook settled a class action lawsuit involving its use of facial recognition technology in its photo-tagging feature for $650 million. The lawsuit alleged the scans were created without user consent and violated Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act.

The new lawsuit alleges that Facebook captured Texans' biometric data without consent "billions of times" and exposed their personal information "to other entities who further exploited it" without users' knowledge. An estimated 20.5 million Texans are on Facebook, according to the lawsuit. Texas will seek civil penalties in the "hundreds of billions of dollars," according to The Wall Street Journal, which earlier reported on the lawsuit. 

The lawsuit accuses the social media giant of violating a Texas biometric privacy law because the company didn't receive consent from both Facebook and Instagram users to capture facial data and failed to destroy biometric data in a "reasonable time." Called the Texas Capture of Use of Biometrics Identifier Act, the law states that an entity must destroy biometric data no later than a year after the purpose for capturing the information expires. The lawsuit also alleges that Facebook engaged in false, misleading or deceptive acts by failing to inform users about the biometric data collection, violating a state consumer protection law.

In an emailed statement Monday, a Meta spokesperson said that the "claims are without merit" and that the company will defend itself "vigorously."


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Bipartisan Bill Would Compel Google To Break Up Its Ad Business


Bipartisan Bill Would Compel Google to Break Up Its Ad Business


Bipartisan Bill Would Compel Google to Break Up Its Ad Business

What's happening

A group of senators introduced a new bill that would force Google to break up its online ad business if it's passed into law.

Why it matters

The bill is a threat to Google's primary revenue source and could up-end its business model.

What's next

The bill has a long way to go and there's no guarantee it will be passed into law, especially during an election year.

A bipartisan bill designed to break up Google's massive online ad business has been introduced in the US Senate.

The Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act, introduced Thursday, would prevent companies processing more than $20 billion in digital ad transactions annually from engaging in ad sales, according to the text of the legislation. The bill would force Google to divest its digital ads business within a year if passed. 

The bill targets companies like Google that operate in multiple parts of the online ad economy, which senators say is a conflict of interest. Ad sales on its giant Search product is a pillar of the $209 billion in revenue that Google raked in last year. The company also helps third-party advertisers sell and purchase ads online and runs auctions at which ads are sold. 

"When you have Google simultaneously serving as a seller and a buyer and running an exchange, that gives them an unfair, undue advantage in the marketplace, one that doesn't necessarily reflect the value they are providing," Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who is leading the bill, told The Wall Street Journal. "When a company can wear all these hats simultaneously, it can engage in conduct that harms everyone."

In a statement, Google said that its ad tools, along with those from its competitors, help American businesses grow and protect customers from privacy risks or misleading ads. "Breaking those tools would hurt publishers and advertisers, lower ad quality, and create new privacy risks," a Google spokesperson said. Google says that "low-quality data brokers" will flood the net with "spammy ads" and that this bill is the "wrong bill, at the wrong time, aimed at the wrong target."

In a press release, Lee and other senators called Google's business model a "tax on thousands of American businesses, and thus a tax on millions of American consumers."

The bill is the latest in a string of legislative proposals designed to limit the power of Big Tech. A package of five bills, including the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and Ending Platform Monopolies Act, directly target Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook parent Meta. 

If some or all of these bills were to pass, it would give Congress substantially more power in dealing with the massive tech industry, which is widely seen as lightly regulated.

The bill is co-sponsored by Texas Republican Ted Cruz and Democrats Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. Similar legislation is set to be introduced in the House, according to The Journal. 

The new legislation comes at a tricky time for Congress. Mid-term elections that could tip control to the Republicans take place in November. Opportunities to get a floor vote time might be limited.

Google is also facing lawsuits that accuse it of monopoly control of online ad sales. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a coalition of 16 states and Puerto Rico in suing the search giant for allegedly controlling the online ad market. Google has said Paxton's allegations are inaccurate and asked a judge to dismiss the case. 

Paxton has also filed a privacy lawsuit against Google. On Thursday, he amended it to include a claim that Google's Chrome browser tracks sensitive user data even when it's in incognito mode. A proposed class action lawsuit, Brown et al v. Google LLC, alleges that Google's Chrome browser collects data while in that private browsing mode.


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Facebook's Updated Values Include 'Meta, Metamates, Me'


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Facebook's Updated Values Include 'Meta, Metamates, Me'


Facebook's Updated Values Include 'Meta, Metamates, Me'

Facebook changed its name to Meta in October to reflect its focus on the creation of virtual spaces where people can work, play and socialize in what's known as the metaverse. Now the social media giant is revamping its values.

In a note to Facebook employees, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined six of the company's updated values. The values include move fast, focus on long-term impact, build awesome things, live in the future and be direct and respect your colleagues. The last value is "Meta, Metamates, Me," a reference to the Navy phrase "Ship, shipmate, self." 

"It's about the sense of responsibility we have for our collective success and to each other as teammates. It's about taking care of our company and each other," Zuckerberg writes in the note, which he shared publicly on Facebook on Tuesday. Facebook wrote its values in 2007. 

The social network's rebranding and the company's updated values showcase how Facebook is trying to revamp its battered image as it focuses on what Zuckerberg thinks will be the successor to the mobile internet. The social network has faced criticism from politicians, advocacy groups and others for failing to protect user privacy and combat hate speech and misinformation. Some of Meta's workers are also questioning if the company should be creating new products without fixing all the problems it already has on its social media platform, The New York Times reported in February. Meta will likely have a harder time policing offensive content such as online harassment in the metaverse, which is a problem the company is already grappling with in virtual reality. 

Meanwhile, Meta's problems are still growing.

On Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Meta, accusing the company of violating the state's privacy laws by capturing biometric data on tens of millions of Texans without properly obtaining consent. A Meta spokesperson said the "claims are without merit."

On Tuesday, Facebook also announced it would start referring to its News Feed as Feed to reflect the variety of content users see on the platform. 


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Signal, WhatsApp And Telegram: Here's Which Secure Messaging App You Should Use


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Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram: Here's which secure messaging app you should use


Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram: Here's which secure messaging app you should use

If your choice of encrypted messaging app is a toss-up between Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp, do not waste your time with anything but Signal. This isn't about which one has cuter features, more bells and whistles or is the most convenient to use: It's purely about privacy. And if privacy's what you're after, nothing beats Signal.

You probably already know what happened. In a tweet heard 'round the world last January, tech mogul Elon Musk continued his feud with Facebook by advocating people drop its WhatsApp messenger and use Signal instead. Twitter's then-CEO Jack Dorsey retweeted Musk's call. Around the same time, right-wing social network Parler went dark following the Capitol attacks, while political boycotters fled Facebook and Twitter. It was the perfect storm -- the number of new users flocking to Signal and Telegram surged by tens of millions

Read more: Everything to know about Signal

The jolt also reignited security and privacy scrutiny over messaging apps more widely. Among the top players currently dominating download numbers, there are some commonalities. All are mobile apps available in the Google Play store and App Store that support cross-platform messaging, have group chat features, offer multifactor authentication and can be used to share files and multimedia. They all also provide encryption for texting, voice and video calls.

Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp use end-to-end encryption in some portion of their app, meaning that if an outside party intercepts your texts, they should be scrambled and unreadable. It also means that the exact content of your messages supposedly can't be viewed by employees of those companies when you are communicating with another private user. This prevents law enforcement, your mobile carrier and other snooping entities from being able to read your messages even when they intercept them (which happens more often than you might think). 

The privacy and security differences between Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp couldn't be bigger, though. Here's what you need to know about each of them. 

Getty/SOPA Images
  • Does not collect data, only your phone number
  • Free, no ads, funded by nonprofit Signal Foundation 
  • Fully open-source
  • Encryption: Signal Protocol

Signal is a typical one-tap install app that can be found in your normal marketplaces like Google Play and Apple's App Store and works just like the usual text-messaging app. It's an open-source development provided free of charge by the nonprofit Signal Foundation and has been famously used for years by high-profile privacy icons like Edward Snowden.

Signal's main function is that it can send -- to either an individual or a group -- fully encrypted text, video, audio and picture messages, after verifying your phone number and letting you independently verify other Signal users' identity. For a deeper dive into the potential pitfalls and limitations of encrypted messaging apps, CNET's Laura Hautala's explainer is a life-saver. 

When it comes to privacy, it's hard to beat Signal's offer. It doesn't store your user data. And beyond its encryption prowess, it gives you extended, onscreen privacy options, including app-specific locks, blank notification pop-ups, face-blurring antisurveillance tools and disappearing messages. 

Occasional bugs have proven that the tech is far from bulletproof, of course, but the overall arc of Signal's reputation and results have kept it at the top of every privacy-savvy person's list of identity protection tools. The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times (which also recommends WhatsApp) and The Wall Street Journal all recommend using Signal to contact their reporters safely. 

For years, the core privacy challenge for Signal lay not in its technology but in its wider adoption. Sending an encrypted Signal message is great, but if your recipient isn't using Signal, then your privacy may be nil. Think of it like the herd immunity created by vaccines, but for your messaging privacy. 

Now that Musk's and Dorsey's endorsements have sent a surge of users to get a privacy booster shot, however, that challenge may be a thing of the past. 

Getty/NurPhoto
  • Data linked to you: Name, phone number, contacts, user ID
  • Free, forthcoming Ad Platform and premium features, funded mainly by founder
  • Only partially open-source
  • Encryption: MTProto

Telegram falls somewhere in the middle of the privacy scale, and it stands apart from other messenger apps because of its efforts to create a social network-style environment. While it doesn't collect as much data as WhatsApp, it also doesn't offer encrypted group calls like WhatsApp, nor as much user data privacy and company transparency as Signal. Data collected by Telegram that could be linked to you includes your name, phone number, contact list and user ID. 

Telegram also collects your IP address, something else Signal doesn't do. And unlike Signal and WhatsApp, Telegram's one-to-one messages aren't encrypted by default. Rather, you have to turn them on in the app's settings. Telegram group messages also aren't encrypted. Researchers found that while some of Telegram's MTProto encryption scheme was open-source, some portions were not, so it's not completely clear what happens to your texts once they're in Telegram's servers. 

Telegram has seen several breaches. Some 42 million Telegram user IDs and phone numbers were exposed in March of 2020, thought to be the work of Iranian government officials. It would be the second massive breach linked to Iran, after 15 million Iranian users were exposed in 2016. A Telegram bug was exploited by Chinese authorities in 2019 during the Hong Kong protests. Then there was the deep-fake bot on Telegram that has been allowed to create forged nudes of women from regular pictures. Most recently, its GPS-enabled feature allowing you to find others near you has created obvious problems for privacy. 

I reached out to Telegram to find out whether there were any major security plans in the works for the app, and what its security priorities were after this latest user surge. I'll update this story when I hear back.

Angela Lang/CNET
  • Data linked to you: Too much to list (see below)
  • Free; business versions available for free, funded by Facebook
  • Not open-source, except for encryption
  • Encryption: Signal Protocol 

Let's be clear: There's a difference between security and privacy. Security is about safeguarding your data against unauthorized access, and privacy is about safeguarding your identity regardless of who has access to that data. 

On the security front, WhatsApp's encryption is the same as Signal's, and that encryption is secure. But that encryption protocol is one of the few open-source parts of WhatsApp, so we're being asked to trust WhatsApp more than we are Signal. WhatsApp's actual app and other infrastructure have also faced hacks, just as Telegram has. 

Jeff Bezos' phone was famously hacked in January of 2020 through a WhatsApp video message. In December of the same year, Texas' attorney general alleged -- though has not proven -- that Facebook and Google struck a back-room deal to reveal WhatsApp message content. A spyware vendor targeted a WhatsApp vulnerability with its software to hack 1,400 devices, resulting in a lawsuit from Facebook. WhatsApp's unencrypted cloud-based backup feature has long been considered a security risk by privacy experts and was one way the FBI got evidence on notorious political fixer Paul Manafort. To top it off, WhatsApp has also become known as a haven for scam artists and malware purveyors over the years (just as Telegram has attracted its own share of platform abuse, detailed above). 

Despite the hacks, it's not the security aspect that concerns me about WhatsApp as much as the privacy. I'm not eager for Facebook to have yet another piece of software installed on my phone from which it can cull still more behavioral data via an easy-to-use app with a pretty interface and more security than your regular messenger. 

When WhatsApp says it can't view the content of the encrypted messages you send to another WhatsApp user, what is doesn't say is that there's a laundry list of other data that it collects that could be linked to your identity: Your unique device ID, usage and advertising data, purchase history and financial information, physical location, phone number, your contact information and that of your list of contacts, what products you've interacted with, how often you use the app, and how it performs when you do. The list goes on. This is way more than Signal or Telegram. 

When I asked the company why users should settle for less data privacy, a WhatsApp spokesperson pointed out that it limits what it does with this user data, and that the data collection only applies to some users. For instance, financial transaction data collection would be relevant only to those WhatsApp users in Brazil, where the service is available. 

"We do not share your contacts with Facebook, and we cannot see your shared location," the WhatsApp spokesperson told CNET. 

"While most people use WhatsApp just to chat with friends and family, we've also begun to offer the ability for people to chat with businesses to get help or make a purchase, with health authorities to get information about COVID, with domestic violence support agencies, and with fact checkers to provide people with the ability to get accurate information," the spokesperson said. "As we've expanded our services, we continue to protect people's messages and limit the information we collect." 

Is WhatsApp more convenient than Signal and Telegram? Yes. Is it prettier? Sure. Is it just as secure? We won't know unless we see more of its source code. But is it more private? Not when it comes to how much data it collects comparatively. For real privacy, I'm sticking with Signal and I recommend you do the same. 


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