In an increasingly digital world, it’s easy to overlook the importance of maintaining a secure and private communication channel. And while companies have always been very focused on improving their encryption protocols and security features, the simplest step in your journey is to unlock your account. The log-in process can tell us a lot about what these companies stand for, what sorts of security considerations they prioritize, and how easy it is for you to use these apps. Let’s look at how each application gets you in.
The Ubiquitous Phone Number: A Common Foundation
The first piece of major similarity between all three platforms is that all three use the same basic form of identity: a mobile phone number. This makes it easy for you to attach your real-world identity to your digital one, making it easy to find and connect with people in your address book. The other thing is that you don’t have to remember a separate username and password for the core experience of using the mobile app. Instead, each app sends a unique verification code via SMS (or a phone call) to the number you provide. The code in turn confirms that you’re in the physical possession of the SIM card that identifies that number as an important first layer of verification. The universal approach makes getting started for the least tech-savvy user quite easy. People without much of a tech background get it done with little trouble.
WhatsApp: Simplicity and Seamless Multi-Device Syncing
WhatsApp has no superfluous process for account login. You install the app, enter your phone number, receive an SMS code (to verify the password), re-populate the chat history with your last local backup (if there is one) and it’s ready to go. The main draw of this process is its brevity, but in that you are permanently tied to just one mobile phone.
That’s where the Masuk WhatsApp Web feature comes in. As you can see here, when using WhatsApp on your desktop or laptop, first open your WhatsApp mobile application, click on “Linked Devices” and scan the QR code displayed on the web browser page (which initiates the desktop session by creating a secure, encrypted link between your phone (the main device) and the computer (the secondary device). And more importantly, while the WhatsApp Web Login does not work when the primary device (your phone) is offline or out of power, the desktop client is basically your phone’s equivalent of it.
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Telegram: Flexibility and Cloud-Based Independence
On top of that Telegram lets you choose during the setup process (this is a major departure in terms of philosophy. Like the others, it starts with SMS verification. Now, Telegram will encourage you to set a cloud password, which serves as an extra layer of security to your account. And first, when you’re in the cloud-native architecture, the whole history of all your messages (except for Secret Chats) is store in Telegram not just on your phone.
This structure dramatically changes how Telegram’s multi-device login works: you can log into Telegram on any other phone (or tablet, computer, etc) simply by accessing your phone number and sending a verification code to the new phone. Since your chats are in the cloud, the opportunity to immediately access your entire history on that new phone (as opposed to waiting for your original phone to be online) has been realized. And you can even have multiple accounts logged into at once. This creates tremendous flexibility for Telegram but introduces a risk profile (since your data is centrally stored with Telegram).
Signal: The Privacy Purist’s Approach
The one with the most deliberate, security-focused login process out of all of them is Signal. It also uses your phone number and an SMS code to do its initial registration. But Signal does a lot more to make your identity hideable from its own servers. During registration it can do something called “registration lock” or let you use a PIN. This PIN (which you set up during initial registration) is not used to log in every day but is essential in protecting the graph data in your account and to move your profile over to a new device.
Like WhatsApp, the desktop linking of Signal depends on that you’re simultaneously connected to your primary phone. First you need to open the Signal mobile app on your phone and scan a QR code on the desktop client to launch a Web Login-style process. All messages are encrypted end-to-end and desktop linking is conditioned on your phone being registered and active. This kind of architecture takes security and decentralization much more seriously than cloud-based and independent logins.
Conclusion: Security vs. Convenience vs. Independence
To keep things simple and straight – all of these guys have distinct sign-in systems. Messenger is, naturally, about easy user-friendliness in a way that makes it easy to sign in from any device (thanks to device-specific URLs, however – a testament to that is the WhatsApp Web Login).
The value Telegram places above anything else is its flexibility and cross platform independence by using its cloud storage to totally free your account from any single device. Its great and convenient but you put more trust in the service provider.
