About 16 million text messages are sent each minute worldwide. This is just an estimate because it’s hard to get a real number due to the various limitations that a study of this scale has.
Text apps are an amazing way of keeping in touch with friends and family without distance limitations. It is also a great way of maintaining communication with co-workers and making a share of information fast and easy in the work environment.
For that single reason, the amount of shared information and the nature of its content has led to concerns regarding security. The need for having a secure text environment in which the information is not accessible to any third party has become a priority for several companies and users alike.
Since the word “best” is relative we can’t really give you a list of the best messaging apps. Instead, we created a list of the most popular messaging apps that also provide secure encryption.
Encrypted messaging solves a lot of problems by making it impossible for third parties to intercept and store your messages. And if they manage to do that, the information is not readily available and will only look like a string of code that makes no sense.
Here are the 7 most secure popular texting apps:
1. WhatsApp
WhatsApp is the most widely used messaging app in the world. It has almost 2 billion monthly users and it is available for both Android and iOS.
What makes this app so popular is that despite being completely free to download, it has no annoying ads, it’s easy to use and of course, you get strong security.
Besides the obvious capability of sending and receiving text messages some of the amazing features included are location sharing, GIFs and other media, group chats, sharing documents, stickers and much more.
In 2014 WhatsApp integrated an end-to-end encrypted protocol that ensures nobody out of a conversation can read the messages, not even them. This end-to-end encryption is the same one used in Signal and it was integrated after the app partnered with Open Whisper Systems.
2. iMessage
Equipped with end-to-end encryption, iMessage is probably the best chatting app for iPhone users. With an estimated 1.3 billion users predominantly in the US it does a great job safeguarding your texts.
It is quite a popular app for iOS users because it seamlessly integrates with the entire ecosystem. It works with iPhones, iPads, and macOS. The only downside is that it only works within that ecosystem. It is not possible for users of other operating systems to install it.
