Telegram vs. WhatsApp: what does each of these apps offer you?

(CNN Spanish) – Facebook means the main platform for billions of people around the world. If we put together all its products (the social network Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger), the company has around 3,510 million monthly active users, according to the earnings report for the second quarter of 2021.

Therefore, the fall of Facebook on Monday, which covered all its products and lasted about six hours, resulted in an interruption in communications for many of those millions of users and in a stoppage of its economic flow, since the company Mark Zuckerberg serves as a primary sales and logistics channel for people.

Although the consequences of this fall were negative for users, Facebook and Zuckerberg, there were companies that had great benefits in the middle of this situation, among them Telegram.

According to the CEO and founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, his messaging app saw a record of new users on the day of the Facebook crash. “We welcomed more than 70 refugees from other platforms,” ​​the businessman said on his official Telegram channel.
Were you one of those who downloaded Telegram when the Facebook crash happened? Will you stick with that app instead of WhatsApp? You may be undecided for now. So here we will give you some information that may help you decide:

What are the differences and similarities between Telegram and WhatsApp?

SocialTIC, a non-profit organization that promotes technology for social purposes, conducted a comparison of what both Telegram and WhatsApp offer. Here are the most important details.

What does this mean? Which Telegram is better?

Not necessarily. It should be clear, as shown in the table above, that each of the applications has its advantages and disadvantages.

Now, for Dmitry Bestuzhev, director of Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team in Latin America, the protection offered by WhatsApp is not bad, but the application has deficiencies in terms of Privacy (that is, on the subject of the mechanisms we have to control who sees and who does not see our information).

“The protection of WhatsApp as such is not that it is bad, in the sense that it handles end-to-end encryption, you can enable two-step verification. But in privacy we will be more exposed (…) ; I don’t know what he is talking about (a user in his WhatsApp conversations), but I know everything about where he is, who he is with and when he returns home. It is the follow-up without knowing what you are talking, writing or saying, “explained Bestuzhev in an interview. with CNN.

In the case of Telegram, one of the criticisms of the Kaspersky manager is on the issue of encryption of messages, as the table above also explained.

Bestuzhev points out that, in conventional Telegram chats, it is as if a single key is used to block and protect the conversations of all users, while in WhatsApp it is one key for each conversation (which is end-to-end encryption) . This changes if you go to a secret chat conversation on Telegram, since a key is used there to protect each conversation.

No app is perfect, but there are alternatives

At the end of the day, “each one has something unique and, at the same time, does not have everything we need. Unfortunately, until today, there is no app with which you can say ‘If you have this, you don’t need anything else'” Bestuzhev said.

However, there are “safe, private and superfunctional alternatives. They have everything you need: send files, photos, videos, location, voice messages, calls, group calls. Everything, but that work better,” added the manager. .

Two of the apps that may work best are Signal and Threema. The first, although it has disadvantages such as that you have to give the phone number to create an account, it is a great option among the free applications; Meanwhile, the second is one of the best there is, but it is a paid app (a single payment of around US $ 5) and it does not have many users since the free options are preferred.