A year ago and now also in October 2022, WhatsApp, the most popular messenger in Germany, was temporarily down. In 2021, the outage, which also affected the Facebook and Instagram apps, also belonging to the metagroup, lasted almost seven hours. Calculated on an annual basis, these outages may not be significant.
However, the recent failure may be a reason some users are looking for alternatives. In addition to reliability, encryption also plays a role in messaging apps. How easily can the messages, photos and videos I send be intercepted and viewed by strangers?
In February 2022, Stiftung Warentest published a test on messaging services for Android and iOS from Apple. End-to-end encryption, which is considered particularly secure, has been attested to on eight messengers, including WhatsApp. However, the service only came in 6th place out of 15 with the “satisfactory” quality score (2.6).
WhatsApp only in 6th place
The problem with the market leader WhatsApp is therefore not the functions or the encryption, and it is the only app in which to make calls “it worked quite well even with poor reception”. But WhatsApp belongs to the Facebook group Meta, which makes most of its money from advertising. WhatsApp shares some user data with the parent company.
iMessage, Apple’s service for iPhone, performed very badly. In the categories “Features”, “Installation and use” and “Privacy protection” there were only “satisfactory” ratings for the messenger of the big tech group, which advertises that data is safe with it.
Problem according to Stiftung Warentest: Although the app offers end-to-end encryption, the default automatically creates backups of iMessages in iCloud, including key transfer. Apple and perhaps hackers could see the chats.
Test winner Signal with better functions than WhatsApp
The test winner is the Signal app. They are distinguished by “versatile functions, simple operation and convincing encryption”. Signal is functionally better than WhatsApp and offers more settings and security options.
However, Stiftung Warentest noted “significant shortcomings” in the data protection declaration for almost all tested messengers, including Signal. Only the Wire app has passed the statutory review of the data protection statements.
Privacy statements are a problem in most cases
One of the criticisms of the data protection declarations was that they were not transparent, for example as regards the transmission of data to third countries and the purposes of the data processing.
Telegram did not get a verdict
The Telegram service, also popular in Germany, did not receive a grade in the test. The Stiftung Warentest justifies this by saying that Telegram is no longer just a messenger, but also a social network with groups of up to 200,000 members. Furthermore, Stiftung Warentest refers to widespread criticism of Telegram:
The service, which is also popular on the conspiracy ideologue scene, has been repeatedly criticized because criminal offenses such as murder claims are often not cleared by the provider. Stiftung Warentest was unable to verify this point.
The four best messengers according to Stiftung Warentest: all are free
The four worst messengers according to Stiftung Warentest: all are free
Stiftung Warentest acts on behalf of the state and is financed with tax money. of the full and detailed proof of the messengers activated at € 4.90.
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