The safest messaging applications in 2025

Over the year, trust in Telegram messenger by cybersecurity experts decreased due to changes in the company’s confidentiality policy. Experts call the most protected application for communication a Signal blocked in Russia, and among the new players in the market – the Australian Session. Experts see the trend for the great transparency of the work of IT companies, while users, on the contrary, strive for privacy in communication.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the study of Artezio (part of the Lanit Group of Companies), dedicated to the security and security of instant messengers on the market. The list of the safest messages for messaging in 2025, according to the company, included Signal, Olvid, Threema, Element (Matrix), Session, Wickr, Wire, Imessage, WhatsApp and Viber. As part of the study, experts evaluated both the technical aspects of the protection of applications and their resistance to relevant threats. Messengers were tested according to 60 key parameters: from the quality of encryption and protection of metadata to resistance to social engineering and transparency, a confidentiality policy.

However Telegram The list of the most protected messengers did not enter, previously taking fifth place there. “Despite the high popularity of Telegram, it was not included in the updated rating due to significant changes in security policy in 2024,” says Sergey Matusevich, development director of AI and web technologies. In addition, Telegram still does not have end-to-end encryption by default in all chats, including group, which is a critical disadvantage from the point of view of modern security standards, he explains.

While Signal (The developer company belongs to the American NPO Signal Technology Foundation), according to researchers, has become a rating leader thanks to open code, the minimum collection of metadata and the innovation system of “delayed encryption”, which since 2024 provides protection even when compromising keys. In August 2024, Roskomnadzor said that he limited access to Signal (see “Kommersant” dated August 9, 2024). The reason was called violations that allow the use of the messenger « for terrorist purposes. » The Telegram leadership went to cooperate with France’s power structures after the detention of its co -founder Pavel Durov on August 24 last year, later the messenger began to respond to requests and other countries as part of the investigation, the Le Figaro newspaper said in September. Telegram did not answer Kommersant.

Analysts awarded the second place to the French messenger Olvid With a unique Zero-Trust architecture that does not require a phone number or email when registering. Messenger Threema – In third place, for complete through encryption and anonymous registration. Fourth place at Element (Matrix) – a decentralized platform with an open code.

The holder of the fifth place – Session (Open anonymous messenger created in Australia) – previously not included in the list. The technology of routing allowed him to take a high position: the messages pass through several intermediate servers, each of which “knows” only the previous and the next nodes, but not the entire route (this principle is used in Tor). WhatsApp Saves a place in the ranking thanks to the Signal protocol and default encryption. However, experts note the risks associated with belonging to META (the organization is recognized as extremist and prohibited in the Russian Federation): the study revealed possible channels of metadata leakage about users.

In general, in 2025, several trends in the secure communications market have already been identified.

On the one hand, as noted in Artezio, this is deanonymization of standard platforms. Traditional players, including Telegram and WhatsApp, began to cooperate more often with law enforcement agencies, which led to the migration of users for alternative services. On the other hand, experts note a significant increase in privacy value among users.

“The issue of the balance between confidentiality and safety remains open,” says Evgeny Yanov, head of the Audit and Consulting Department of the Audit and Consulting. “However, if the messenger“ binds ”the account to the phone number, then there is no need to talk about privacy, taking into account the requirement to buy mobile numbers according to documents.” Attackers will use the most popular messengers to implement their schemes, says Denis Kaleberg, general director of Safetech Group. If we are talking about fraudulent calls from the Bank Security Service, then Viber and WhatsApp are “leading”, Telegram is used for other social engineering operations.

Philip Krupanin