You probably think your messages are private. You see those little lock icons and feel secure. The problem is that messaging apps can leak way more than you think.
So what exactly can go wrong? Let's dig into what your favorite chat app might be telling the world about you, and how adding a proxy can help you stay truly private.
What Data Can Leak from Messaging Apps?
If your messages aren't protected with end-to-end encryption, their content is basically an open book to service providers, hackers, or government agencies. In simple words, a so-called "secure" message app that skips strong encryption isn't really secure at all.
Even when encryption is working perfectly, apps still collect tons of metadata. They log who you talk to, how long those conversations last, and how often you're chatting.
Think about it this way: this metadata creates a kind of digital fingerprint of your activity. You could say that exposing this data tells almost the same story as exposing your actual conversations.
On top of that, apps often receive information about your IP address, device type, phone number, and other technical connection details.
The problem gets worse if your messenger plays nice with other services. For example, if the app is baked into the ecosystem of a big corporation (Google, Apple, Meta), that company suddenly knows your user ID, linked phone number, contact list, and location data.
Sure, any corporation will tell you this data is used to "improve services" and "fine-tune advertising." However, it still raises serious privacy concerns — and serves as a good reminder of why selecting the most secure messaging app you can find really matters.
In this article, we'll share some options that can actually be called the best app for private messaging and compare them to several mainstream choices.
How to Tell If You’re Really Using a Private Message App
Want to know if you're dealing with a truly secure message app? Use this checklist. This is more like an ideal portrait of the most secure messaging app, but even checking off some of these points is already a good sign.
End-to-end Encryption by Default
All chats should be protected with end-to-end encryption so that only the sender and the recipient can read the messages. That means even the service owners, developers, or moderators can’t access them.
If there’s no E2EE, or you have to turn it on manually, that’s a serious security downside for any secure message app.
Open-source Code
A secure message app with open-source code allows an independent community to audit its security.
The ability to study and test the code, finding vulnerabilities before attackers do, increases trust in the messenger. Even regular internal security audits are a big plus.
Minimal Metadata Collection
If nothing is collected, there’s nothing to leak.
A privacy-focused messenger tries not to store excessive information about your conversations. Ideally, the service doesn’t log who talks to whom and when — or uses special techniques to hide this information (for example, multi-hop routing of messages).
Anonymous Sign-up
If a secure message app doesn’t require personal data — like your phone number, email, or full name — to create an account, you’ve lucked out.
The fewer details required at registration, the higher the user’s anonymity.
No Data Sharing with Third Parties
Most secure messaging apps don’t monetize personal data and fundamentally refuse to share user information with advertisers or government agencies unless absolutely necessary.
A transparent privacy policy and regular transparency reports about data requests are good signs that the service takes privacy seriously.
Also, pay attention to whether the app offers:
- Two-factor authentication.
- Disappearing/self-destructing messages.
- Screenshot alerts.
- App lock with a password or PIN.
We understand that finding the most secure messaging app today isn’t easy. But the more points from this checklist your app checks off, the more reason you have to treat it as one of the most secure messaging apps out there.
Overview of the Most Secure Messaging Apps
Let's take a look at several popular messaging options.
Some of them get mentioned constantly among the most secure and privacy-focused choices — the kind you might see recommended as the most secure messaging app for everyday use.
But we've also thrown in a couple of more "mainstream" picks to dig into how privacy actually works there, and how much protection you really get from a typical secure message app.
Signal
Signal is developed by a non-profit organization and funded through grants and donations, so there are no ads or trackers. It’s distributed as open-source software, and its code regularly undergoes independent security audits — one of the reasons it’s often mentioned as a contender for the most secure messaging app.
By default, all chats in Signal are protected with end-to-end encryption using a strong open protocol (the Signal Protocol).
The app doesn’t store your messages on its servers — all data lives only on the user’s device. And the minimal service data it does need is anonymized wherever possible. For example, the Sealed Sender feature encrypts information about the message sender, so the server can see the recipient but can’t determine who sent the message.
On top of that, you also get:
- Disappearing messages.
- “View once” for media.
- Screenshot blocking in secret chats.
- Automatic face blurring in photos to protect the privacy of people in the conversation.
What’s the downside? Your account is still tied to a phone number. However, you can hide your number from unknown contacts, which makes Signal a more practical secure message app even with this limitation.
Session
Session, as a secure message app, prioritizes anonymity and the absence of metadata. There’s no phone or email binding — your account is created in one click and identified by a random 66-character ID.
The app is built on a decentralized network of nodes running on the Oxen blockchain, and all messages are routed through a multi-hop onion-routing system. Each message passes through several nodes, and none of them know both the sender and the recipient at the same time — this way, Session hides IP addresses and who’s talking to whom, making surveillance extremely difficult.
Session initially used the Signal Protocol for encrypting content, but later switched to its own Session Protocol based on libsodium and adapted for a decentralized architecture.
Session’s code is open source and developed by the community, and since 2022 the project has been overseen by the Swiss-based Session Technology Foundation, outside the jurisdiction of the 5/9 Eyes countries.
The trade-off for all this privacy is that Session can have small delivery delays due to multi-hop message routing — a limitation to keep in mind when choosing it as your primary secure message app.
Telegram
Telegram combines a wide range of features with reasonably strong security, but it doesn’t provide maximum privacy by default — so it’s hard to call it the most secure messaging app out of the box.
Telegram uses its own two-layer encryption scheme: all chats are encrypted on the client–server link (and stored on the server in encrypted form), while actual end-to-end encryption is only available in “secret chats” and voice calls.
In terms of privacy, Telegram offers several useful options:
- Setting a self-destruct timer for messages.
- Automatically deleting your account after a long period of inactivity.
- Hiding your phone number from strangers.
- Restricting who can see your profile photo.
- Showing a vague “last seen recently” status instead of exact timestamps.
There are also some clear downsides.
If you don’t use secret chats, Telegram’s administrators technically can access the contents of your cloud messages (even though the company publicly claims it does not disclose users’ personal data). From a strict privacy standpoint, that puts it behind a truly secure message app.
Registration in Telegram is also tied to a phone number, and there’s no way to create a completely anonymous account.
Briar
Briar is built on a peer-to-peer principle and doesn’t use any central servers to deliver messages at all.
Instead, this secure message app connects users directly over the Tor network. In practice, each message is sent through encrypted “onion” routes similar to those used in Tor, which protects the anonymity of both the source and destination of the traffic.
Because of this, Briar is almost impossible to block: there are no single central nodes, and traffic is routed through random Tor nodes.
- If the Internet is unavailable, Briar can connect devices directly over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, forming a local mesh network.
- Briar provides end-to-end encryption for all conversations and strong resistance to interception: third parties can’t listen in on the traffic, and metadata is hidden thanks to Tor-based routing.
- The project’s code is open source and has undergone independent security audits.
- Contacts in Briar are added by mutual consent only: users exchange special links or QR codes, which eliminates unexpected spam.
- In practice, Briar collects almost nothing about you — no phone numbers, no addresses, no contact lists stored on a server (there isn’t one). Everything is stored only on your devices.
There is a trade-off for this level of privacy — limited functionality. Briar is mainly available on Android (with desktop versions also offered) and doesn’t support cloud sync. File transfer is available (basic attachments like images), but there are no calls.
For everyday use by a mainstream audience, Briar may not be the most convenient option. But in terms of anonymity and independence from infrastructure, it’s hard to beat and comes very close to what you’d expect from the most secure messaging app for high-risk scenarios.
Threema
Unlike most competitors, Threema is a paid app. But that’s actually a sign that it doesn’t need to make money from ads or user data — a solid starting point for anyone looking for a truly secure message app.
When you sign up for Threema, you don’t need to provide a phone number or email. Instead, you’re given a random Threema ID that you can share with other contacts.
Threema provides end-to-end encryption for all messages, calls, and files by default. There’s a strong focus on minimizing metadata: for example, messages are stored on the server only until they’re delivered to the recipient and then immediately deleted. All contact lists and groups are managed locally on the device.
Threema is also partially decentralized: for business customers, there are options for running a dedicated server or deploying on-premise.
The app’s source code is open and regularly undergoes independent security audits, which reinforces its reputation as one of the most secure messaging app options for privacy-conscious users.
The downsides:
- No free version.
- No support for 2FA.
- Secure access to your profile depends entirely on how well-protected your device is.
Wire
In Wire, end-to-end encryption is always on and applies to all types of content: messages, calls, conferences, and files. The messenger uses protocols based on the same principles as the Signal Protocol. Analytics or telemetry data isn’t shared with third parties, but in terms of how much metadata is collected, Wire still falls behind Signal or Session.
The app is built on open-source code available on GitHub, and its security has been confirmed by public audits.
To register in Wire, all you need is an email address — no phone number required. That’s already a green flag for privacy, since you can use a fresh, anonymous email instead of tying the account to your real identity.
Wire can be used on multiple devices at the same time. For example, you can run one account in parallel on your phone and your computer without compromising encryption — a big usability plus for a secure message app.
The only real downside here is metadata collection, but even with that in mind, Wire still ranks among the most secure messaging app options available today.
Element
Element is an open-source client for the Matrix network and can be called a secure message app.
The key difference with Element/Matrix is its decentralized architecture. There’s no single server or company that controls the entire network. Matrix works on a federation model, where anyone can run their own server, and users on different servers can freely communicate with each other. As you might guess, there’s no requirement to tie your account to a phone number or email.
Element supports end-to-end encryption (the Olm/Megolm protocols) for private chats and groups. It needs to be enabled in settings, and in modern versions of Element, private conversations are already encrypted by default.
The app is open-source and, as part of the broader Matrix ecosystem, is constantly reviewed by auditors and the community for potential vulnerabilities.
You can sign in via Google or GitHub and rely on their 2FA, but the messenger itself doesn’t have built-in two-factor authentication — a slight but notable drawback if you’re chasing the most secure messaging app setup possible.
No, this is not the most private messaging app.
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, and since 2016, it has used end-to-end encryption by default for all private chats and calls. Messages are stored on the servers only in encrypted form and usually only temporarily — until they’re delivered.
From a purely technical standpoint, the encryption does its job: the content of your chats and calls is well protected against interception. But from a privacy perspective, WhatsApp is still heavily criticized — mainly because of who owns it.
Meta owns WhatsApp, and the app actively collects metadata and other information about users — from your contact list to your phone model and IP address. By using WhatsApp, you’re effectively sharing data about your communication patterns with the broader Facebook ecosystem.
Officially, this is used for advertising, but can anyone really be 100% sure that’s the only purpose? It’s one of the key reasons many people don’t see it as the best secure messaging app, even if the encryption itself is solid.
There’s also the issue of account anonymity. In WhatsApp, it simply doesn’t exist: you can only register with a mobile phone number.
On top of that, chat backups in the cloud are not encrypted by default. This creates a serious weak spot: a cloud provider — or an attacker who gains access to the backup — can read its contents, no matter how secure the app for private messages might be in transit.
Proxies as an Extra Layer of Privacy
Using proxy servers is an effective way to enhance your privacy in a secure message app, in addition to any protections already built into the app itself.
A proxy acts as an intermediary between you and the messenger’s server: instead of connecting to the service directly, you go through a separate relay server.
What Exactly Proxies Hide
The main function of a proxy is to hide your real IP address and location from the messenger’s servers and from outside observers. With a normal connection, your IP can be visible to the service and used to determine your region or even help link activity back to you.
When traffic goes through a proxy, the messenger sees the proxy server’s IP address instead of yours.
A good proxy doesn’t break or downgrade encryption — it simply forwards already encrypted data. For example, when Signal was blocked in several countries, the project recommended using proxy servers and emphasized that all traffic remains opaque to the proxy operator.
Even if you’re already using a secure message app or the most secure messaging app you can find, this extra hop helps reduce what the service and your provider can see.
When It Makes Sense to Use a Proxy with Messengers
Proxies aren’t a silver bullet. But they do make sense if you have specific needs, such as:
- The messenger is blocked in your country or network.
- You need to hide the very fact that you’re using a particular messenger.
- You want extra protection against metadata collection by the service itself.
- You face a high threat level or your conversations are especially sensitive.
And no, we’re not talking about shady schemes.
Session and Briar already hide IPs by design (through their own routing layers), so an external proxy may not add much there. But for more “classic” models — Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp — a proxy can be a useful extra layer on top of what the app already offers.
Mobile Proxies
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Limitations and Risks: What You Need to Keep in Mind
An extra layer, like a proxy, doesn’t make you invulnerable.
No messenger — even the most secure messaging app combined with a proxy — can give you absolute anonymity if you make mistakes yourself. You can use the most secure message app through three different proxies and still expose your identity by sharing personal details with someone or by reusing the same nickname elsewhere. The human factor is always there.
Neither proxies nor even the most secure messaging app can protect you from a compromised device. If your phone is infected with malware or physically seized by attackers, no encryption will save you — they'll be able to read your chats directly from the unlocked app.
If you rely on public free proxies, there's also the risk of running into unstable or even controlled nodes. The safer approach is to choose reputable, well-reviewed proxy providers. For advanced users, running your own proxy or VPN is also an option.
And finally, by adding an extra hop in the connection, you almost always trade speed for privacy. File transfers or calls over a proxy may become less reliable or fail altogether.
Final Thoughts
Choosing the most secure messaging app really comes down to what exactly you’re trying to protect — the content of your conversations, your metadata, your identity, or all of the above.
Proxy servers and other anonymization tools can complement the capabilities of a secure message app, especially in situations involving censorship or higher-than-usual risks. Proxies add a second layer of obfuscation, shielding your traffic from extra prying eyes. But no technical solution can offer a guarantee.
The good news is that today you have a real choice of tools that let you communicate freely and safely. Just don’t forget about simple human mistakes — and your messages are far more likely to stay between you and the people they’re meant for.