Communicating with others
A telephone call and a text message travel with no encryption. An end-to-end encrypted app is a different thing, and knowing where the line is tells you which conversations are safe to have where.
Steps
5 steps
to tick a step and keep a streak. Reading needs no account.
End-to-end encryption means the sender locks and only the receiver unlocks.
No third party in between can read what you sent, including the network and the app company.
Ordinary calls and SMS have none of this.
Apps such as Signal and WhatsApp offer encrypted voice, video and messages in their place.
The content is protected. The pattern is not.
Who you contact, when you contact them, and where you were are all still visible.
Prefer open source and established protocols.
Code that anybody can review, from a provider whose record you can check, is the test that matters.
The best app is also the one your contacts use.
Disappearing messages, aliases and who is already there are real reasons to choose one over another.