WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, that's probably* better than using Telegram.
* Unless you want to go into a conspiracy theory that all the Meta employees can see the source code and nobody has ever felt like whistleblowing about the backdoor Meta put into WhatsApp, that is.
> WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted
Don't forget that metadata is not encrypted, so Meta know who you are writing to, who writes to you, who your contacts are, all the usage pattens of the app, and more metadata (not sure if it's still the case, but a few years ago WhatsApp even uploaded the battery state of your phone to Meta).
Sure, end-to-end encryption encrypts the data, it doesn't hide the metadata.
WhatsApp obviously more encrypted than Telegram since later have no proper E2EE whatsorver by default and also sync all history from server.
Its still preferable to use Signal since now it actually supports numberless registration. Hopefully they will actually fee payable not via credit card at some point.
> Its still preferable to use Signal since now it actually supports numberless registration.
It's preferable to use Signal because they don't collect as much metadata as WhatsApp, and the client is open source.
I don't care so much about the numberless registration. Actually I don't even understand why people care so much about it.
It is end-to-end encrypted, but aren't chat history backups stored in plain text on some server?
These two things are mutually exclusive. They can store encrypted backups on a server somewhere, but unless they have the decryption keys from both parties (E2E) then no, it can't be stored in plain-text.
If you don't encrypt the backups, they are unencrypted, yes. That's why you should encrypt your backups. It's baked right into WhatsApp on the screen where you manage your backups.
Sure. Also if you take a screenshot of every message and publish it on the Internet, then your messages will be public.
even if all meta employees see the source they cannot read messages as long as keys as generated on-device, which is verifiable
My point was that all meta employees seeing the source means that there is a non-zero chance that one of them would realise if there was a backdoor.