WhatsApp’s Privacy Policy has come under a lot of scrutiny after two students Karmanya Singh Sareen and Shreya Sethi filed a PIL in Supreme Court. Ever since WhatsApp was bought by Facebook back in 2014, concerns regarding user privacy came to limelight as WhatApp kept revising privacy policy constantly in favour of more data sharing with Facebook.
Under the latest privacy policy, which you are agreeing to by using the app, users were made to give consent to WhatsApp and Facebook, so that latter could snoop on messages privately circulated between users of WhatsApp. In this background that Supreme Court decided to take a strong stand on WhatsApp privacy situation and how it violated the fundamental rights of its users.
Facebook, who owns the WhatsApp told the Supreme Court that those feeling aggrieved could quit WhatsApp. “Those who find the new privacy policy irksome or violative of their fundamental rights, can quit, ” said WhatsApp’s counsel K K Venugopal in the court. Under this circumstances, if you are someone who feels insulted and bullied by the policy and the attitude of the popular messaging service, here are the best secure messaging alternatives:
Telegram
Telegram looks feels and work exactly like WhatsApp and they have secure messaging features built in. Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram is built on the Open-source platform and has features such as Secret Chats, allowing chat reading only by the desired recipient.
Telegram claims to have over 100 million active users. The app lets you send unlimited media without any limits on their type and size, and your entire chat history will be stored in the cloud, not on device saving you storage space.
Telegram is so powerful that you can create group chats for up to 5,000 members and set up bots for specific tasks.
Wire
Wire is a secure, end-to-end encrypted messenger for calls, chat, sharing pics, videos, files, GIFs, sketches and more. Wire, unlike several other chat apps, gives significant focus on privacy as it does not share or sell your data or contact details to anyone.
Some of the unique features in Wire includes group conversations with up to 128 people, timed messages, delete sent messages from all receiving devices and most importantly it is open-source.
Features like voice & video calls, group talk with up to 10 people, file and location sharing, etc., are also available on Wire.
Viber
Viber is one of the most popular messaging apps with 800 million users worldwide. Viber featured most of the popular recent feature additions to WhatsApp years ago.
Apart from most of the WhatsApp features, Viber’s unique advantages include the ability to send instant video messages, delete messages you sent, hidden chats and public accounts.
Google Allo
Google Allo is Google’s fourth attempt of messaging, after GChat, Wave and Hangout. Google Allo is powerful with the AI- powered Google Assistant baked into it. Smart Reply is one of the unique features in Google Allo which will let you respond to messages without typing a single word.
Hike
Hike is an Indian made messaging platform that is widely popular amongst the millennials. Hike has many interesting features built in, which are very similar to WhatsApp that you won’t miss using it. Some of the interesting features include stickers, chat themes, free SMS, and Snapchat like stories.
Singal
Singal is another privacy-focused messaging service developed by Open Whisper Systems, the company that powers the end-to-end encryption technology in WhatsApp Messenger and Facebook Messenger.
Signal also comes with most of the features WhatsApp has, with more security benefits compared to the former. Some of the unique features of Signal includes self- destructing messages and encrypted backups.
