Muting and blocking: Being able to mute a group chat in which two people are endlessly debating something they only care about is absolutely essential. You can also usually delete messages and exit chats, but neither with much subtlety. You can usually deactivate this in the settings if you want to quietly ignore someone. Read notices: Most apps allow you to see if someone has received your message, such as via blue ticks on WhatsApp. Kik’s test scores aren’t great anyway, so there’s no reason to use it over others.Ĭhat apps: handy features to look out forĪll apps differ in their functionality, but here are some key features that are available on most. We can’t detail the issues because Kik didn’t respond when we contacted it, so the flaws haven’t been verified or fixed. We found a whole host of issues with the Kik app and associated websites during our security testing. We can’t elaborate on details of the flaw or recommend it here, so do consider alternatives. We contacted Viber but it didn’t respond. While Viber did well in our testing (79% iOS and 78% Android), we found a potential flaw that could risk your privacy. Our security and privacy tests flagged some concerns with Signal, but these were addressed satisfactorily after we contacted it. Line is a good but relatively unknown alternative. If the thought of giving any data away to Facebook worries you, you might want to avoid WhatsApp. This doesn’t mean hackers can easily read your messages, but it does mean that the app company can read them if that’s granted in the terms you sign up to. Some apps don’t offer end-to-end encryption. #What is the best free text messaging app full#
With others you can manually activate full encryption for specific conversations. Some chat apps, such as WhatsApp, Signal and Line, encrypt your messages end-to-end by default, meaning only you and who you’re chatting to can see and hear what is being said. However, if you’re still not sure, there are plenty of high-scoring alternatives, such as Signal, if you can get your friends and contacts to also switch. And you don’t actually need a Facebook account to use WhatsApp, either. If you never chat to a non-Europe based business through WhatsApp, you don’t necessarily need to worry. So, it can record that you’re talking to a US-based clothing company on WhatsApp, for example, and then serve you with ads for similar brands on Facebook. While it can’t read the messages, it can collect data on which businesses you talk to and how often you contact them, and then use this to target you with advertising through its various platforms.ĭue to UK data protection laws, Facebook can’t do this while you chat to anyone within the UK or European Union, but it can do so anywhere else. You’ve probably heard about a recent controversy over a change to WhatsApps terms and conditions.įacebook, which bought WhatsApp for $16bn in 2014, now has the ability to track some of the businesses that you chat to on WhatsApp.
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