In the same way, leaving Messenger for WhatsApp will make your content safer and more secure. By way of example, there is absolutely no point in leaving WhatsApp over security and privacy concerns and using Telegram instead, which is a less secure alternative. I’ve argued all along that users are ill-advised to jump from WhatsApp unless and until they understand the differences between the different alternatives. Wandera’s data on Telegram is less reliable, given the way traffic is logged, but Telegram told me its daily and monthly active users, as well as its overall traffic, are all up 30% since last September. There’s no discernible change in its growth trend from September through to January-at least not across Wandera’s sample set-it dipped a little but has since recovered. The headline news is that Signal has surged more than 85% but WhatsApp usage has held steady. “It allows us to monitor for threats in the different apps that users install on their devices has visibility into how and when those apps communicate on the network it allows us to look at whether individual apps are actually being used… It has a very good mix of both company-owned and personal devices.” “Our service is specifically focused on mobile app intelligence,” Wandera’s Michael Covington told me.
Wandera has looked at actual app usage across the devices it monitors, forget install numbers, how much has the usage changed as this WhatsApp backlash has unfolded. A new report from the team at Wandera, published today, suggests that despite the Facebook backlash, WhatsApp traffic is holding up. And so if you’re still using Messenger, your best option is likely to switch to WhatsApp, which, despite recent headlines, is safe and secure to use and likely installed on the phones of most people you know.