In this highly connected world, it’s getting harder to keep private things private. Every text or email we send is out there for bad actors, government agencies, and even the company that you pay for services to scoop up. They don’t just want your name and number, they want as much data as they can get their hands on, so they can identify patterns that can be sold or otherwise exploited.
Corporations have made a business of collecting our data and,apparently that includes your text messages too. Combine that with hackers,phishing scamsand all the other dangers lurking, and it becomes easy to see why I moved to a secure messaging app. At this point, it’s not paranoia, it’s being smart.
What Makes a Messaging App Secure?
Being secure means that from the moment you hit send and your message pops open on the other person’s screen, there is no way a bad actor could read that message, not hackers, not the app developers or your phone carrier. This is done through end-to-end encryption. But that is only part of the solution.
Metadata can be very revealing; in fact, metadata is often used in the courts. So, a secure app should collect the absolute minimum amount of metadata. Finally, being open-source and having third-party auditors are important for credibility and accountability. The three apps here do a great job balancing privacy and usability.
3. Signal
Signal is widely regarded as the most secure messaging app. In fact, its end-to-end encryption called Signal Protocol is used by Google, Facebook, and other big tech companies. What that means for you is that every message, call, photo, or file is protected. There’s no user-tracking, no ads, and no creepy “personalization” engines mining your data. Compared to competitors like WhatsApp or Telegram, Signal is fully open-source, including its server code. It doesn’t rely on ads or user data for revenue, and the only metadata it holds on to is the date and time of your last connection.
2. Threema
Threema is the lone paid app on this list. Threema’s business model isn’t supported by ads or donations, and it doesn’t harvest your data. Its revenue comes from its users. For personal use, it’s a one-time fee, but it offers core, professional, and on-premises subscription tiers that offer more features like GDPR compliance and API access. At the time of this writing, it was $5.99 in the Apple App Store.
What I like about Threema is that it doesn’t require an email address or phone number. During the installation process, you are assigned a random Threema ID that isn’t tied to your identity in any way. Threema operates out of Switzerland, putting it under some of the strictest privacy laws in the world. Messages are deleted from servers as soon as they’re delivered, and metadata is minimized to the point where it’s basically useless to anyone trying to build a profile of you.
It also has features that make it more appealing to businesses, like GDPR compliance, built-in polls, anonymous group chats, and optional self-hosting.
1. Element
Element isn’t as polished or streamlined as Signal or Threema, but I like their decentralized approach. You can use Element’s hosted service, run your own homeserver, or choose another provider, giving you total control over where your data resides. Element’s Matrix protocol supports end-to-end encryption, along with features like bridging to other communication platforms, threaded conversations, integrated polls, and the ability to host multi-person group chats or persistent rooms that feel more like Slack channels than a message thread. The app is free for personal use and has a paid corporate tier that includes things like managed hosting, scaling, compliance, app integrations, and premium support.
While Signal and Threema keep things simple, Element can feel too complex if all you’re looking for is private one-on-one chats. For example, private rooms are secure by default, but public or bridged rooms may not be, so I have to check those settings when I’m setting them up. Also, metadata privacy depends on who runs your homeserver. If you don’t host yourself, then you need to trust your provider. All that said, if you want more control over where your data lives, interoperability, and advanced collaboration tools in addition to encryption, Element offers more than others in this category.
Conclusion
We’re beyond the point where we can just rely on default messaging from phone carriers or tech companies. Between corporate data collection, increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats, and government surveillance, private communication isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity.
Carriers still log metadata about who you talk to and when, and in some cases have a history ofsharing that information, voluntarily or under pressure. Platforms like Facebook are data collection engines that work to build behavioral profiles that fuel the out-of-control ad industry. Secure messaging is about reclaiming control over your own conversations, ensuring your words are read only by the person you intended.
