Found an interesting article on the various options for secure and private messengers on Android – most of their comments do apply to these apps on iPhone as well: Secure & Private Messaging on Android

If you have a minute, definitely read this article!

While I do – in general – agree with most of their “findings,” I disagree with their conclusion about the “best” application, ‘Signal‘. Firstly, because Signal requires a phone number to sign up. Unless you have a VoIP number you use specifically for these types of situations, giving your actual number allows metadata tracking and more. That is why I ONLY use Signal with family. Threema and Session do not require a phone number, and in fact both can be run totally anonymously, which I like. My “default” messaging app is therefore Session, although I use Threema with a handful of friends who are even more paranoid than me :).

You can download Session here or on the Playstore resp. Appstore. My public key for contact via the app is (or check out my Contact page on this site):

For an in-depth explanation why I prefer Session, I recommend Rob Braxman’s analysis: