Messaging Apps
By R.Vireday, Nov 20, 2025
Most of the time I use either Facebook Messenger for friends and family, or my cell phone texting.
This year I started using Telegram with the Global Eco Village Roundtable, but… it wants access to all my contacts! And even though it let choose a few directly from my list, it would NOT let me message those people, UNLESS there was already a chat or message with them in it! I could message anybody else in the group chat, but not my contacts unless I gave full access.
For whatever reason, I was still hesitant to give full access, and researching, rightly so. Since Telegramwill copy my contacts to their servers!
So, I asked meeself(sic): which Messaging app should I primarily use?
TLDR: Signal will be my favorite going forward.
I started using WhatsApp several years ago to communicate, primarily for one friend. And still use it today with a few others. It’s got good audio and video quality like Messenger. But, Meta owned, right?
TikTok, like Facebook I communicate a lot with people on there. But like Messenger we can no longer truly trust that those communications are private. They may be Encrypted, but it is unclear what is available to their servers. And just messages, no chatting unless Live. Plus now to go Live, they want to scan my face. Uh, no no no. Not. gonna. happen.
Signal I use with my kids for a weekly family gathering, and other friends. Again, good audio and video chats too. And open source.
| Telegram | Signal | ||
| End-to-end encryption | Only in secret chats | Default for all messages | Default for all messages |
| Encryption protocol | Proprietary | Open source | Open source |
| Data collection | Moderate | Minimal | Extensive |
| Self-destructing messages | Only in secret chats | Possible for all message |
From https://nordvpn.com/blog/is-telegram-safe/ retrieved 20-11-2025
Article has more details about security features.
So, bottom line, Signal is my current recommendation going forward.
Conference Apps
Small notes on the conference apps we all use.
Zoom changed their policies and now all of the conversations get fed to their AI, they say to train it. But really publicly we don’t know how much goes out the other end.
Google Meets I still have to double check, but with their AI push it’s moving down my list. But handy and available to use. The Eco Roundtable will probably stay with that.
We are beta testing a copy of Big Blue Button at https://abc.Speeque.com. It has a basic interface at the moment, but works okay. And there’s no AI involved (-: Hoping going forward to increase my use there.
There’s and olde computer maxim that eventually any program bloats and incorporates so many features it becomes its own system. Lol. Think Emacs, Archie, MS Word, etc.
From a friend. Telegram is his recommendation
Thank you for this valid question Richard.
I wrote my own little piece about this earlier when people were mentioning that telegram is not encrypted, which is not true:
Info bout signal vs. telegram
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/8974
First note that you should be aware of:
Signal no longer encrypts the database on your phone, that’s why you have to use apps like “Molly” that encrypt the database
all of signal’s texts and calls go through Amazon Web Services… yet it’s never disclosed why or who runs the servers it goes through
This link says it all, basically: https://www.androidcentral.com/telegram-vs-signal-vs-whatsapp
they are incorrect about the peer-to-network-to-peer chats (chats and groups that aren’t “private” on telegram) … as the MTPROTO page (the heavy encryption that Telegram uses) spells it out clearly that ALL chats are heavily encrypted
Here’s that page for reference: https://core.telegram.org/mtproto/description
Here’s the relevant notes:
Note 1
Each plaintext message to be encrypted in MTProto always contains the following data to be checked upon decryption in order to make the system robust against known problems with the components:
server salt (64-Bit)
session id
message sequence number
message length
time
Note 2
Telegram’s End-to-end encrypted Secret Chats are using an Additional layer of encryption on top of the described above. See Secret Chats, End-to-End encryption for details.
MTProto supports Perfect Forward Secrecy in both cloud chats and secret chats.
The term “Perfect Forward Secrecy” is what the entire internet uses in https/SSL … here’s a lil blurb about it:
https://www.sectigo.com/resource-library/perfect-forward-secrecy
Conclusion:
Telegram is by far one of the most advanced and secure messaging app of our time
Something worth considering for those who are pro signal:
https://blog.dijit.sh/i-don-t-trust-signal/