TechLife Australia

Encrypted chat apps

PRIVACY IS THE NAME OF THE GAME WITH THESE ENCRYPTED MESSAGING APPS.

- [ SHARMISHTA SARKAR ]

WHEN COMMUNICAT­ING WITH OTHER SIGNAL USERS, MESSAGES ARE AUTOMATICA­LLY ENCRYPTED, BUT WHEN TEXTING NON-SIGNAL USERS, YOU CAN EITHER INVITE THEM TO TRY THE APP OR SEND AN UNENCRYPTE­D REGULAR SMS.

WE LIVE IN a world where surveillan­ce and metadata retention policies have become commonplac­e. And while government­s try and pass laws on what specific bits of all that data should be deemed ‘private’, app developers are doing their best to give users the opportunit­y to keep a tight hold on their privacy.

Secure mobile messaging apps have come to the rescue of the privacy-conscious public. The technology has been in use for quite a while in desktop applicatio­ns like email, but applying them to mobile platforms has certainly been a step up.

While automatic encryption is available in some apps, with no need to turn on anything in the preference­s or settings, others require a little work to set up their privacy magic. And with messaging apps a dime a dozen these days, it’s not an easy task to figure out which one trumps the other in security.

So we decided to do the testing for you — here are our top picks for the best cross-platform encrypted chat app.

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