Stiftung Warentest recommends Threema

Since Facebook announced the purchase of Whatsapp (Werbewoche.ch reported), users are leaving the previous market leader in chat apps in droves. The distrust of Facebook's data collection mania is great. For example, the social network already has most of the cell phone numbers of its users and can now easily match them with the address books that Whatsapp has always stored. The conversations are insufficiently encrypted and can consequently be read and evaluated by the provider. This supposed total surveillance is driving many Whatsapp users to alternative products. The competition is happy: Since the billion-euro takeover became known, they have been virtually flooded with new users.

In recent days, the Russian app Telegram has repeatedly been named as a favorite. Hyped by the media ("The best messenger comes from Russia"), the chat app experienced a boom, which brought it up to hundred new users per second in the first half of the year. In the conclusion of the German Product test foundation Telegram - which ironically belongs to the Russian Facebook clone VKontakte - is not fully convincing and is rated critical. The end-to-end encryption has to be activated manually, and the app stores the entire address book without asking and without consent, the testers criticize. And although Telegram is the only app that discloses part of the code, a complete analysis of the encrypted data transmission is not possible.

The app Threema, developed and operated in Zurich, is the only app to receive the rating "non-critical". Address books are only stored with the user's explicit consent and in pseudonymized form. End-to-end encryption prevents the provider from reading conversations. The only complaint is that Threema is not open source and thus cannot be verified and tracked by third parties. (hae)

Link to the article of Stiftung Warentest