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SnaKeZ

Alternative...Google Hangouts?

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More secure in a sense, but why should anyone need to give the keys to their instant messaging castle to Google?

I'm shocked that a startup with a similar approach to WhatsApp hasn't made a reasonable rigorous application yet.

> why should anyone need to give the keys to their instant messaging castle to Google?

Equivalent to cc'ing the NSA.

Let's be honest, I'd rather have NSA snoop on what on my texts than a criminal. Both are bad but NSA is at least slightly better.

The trick is to let nobody snoop on your texts.

Which is, as we can see in the GP, is hard ;).

Whatsapp - broken encryption Google Hangout - NSA Texts - NSA (and others) Facebook Messenger - NSA iMessage - probably NSA, though I don't know.

and so forth. Most commonly used text services are woefully leaky.

Yes, that was exactly my point :)

There are already several messaging applications that are much better than WhatsApp (Line or WeChat, to name a few without including the Big G), but people keep sticking to WhatsApp due to the network effect (it's what your friends have).

It's rather sad, given that with practically any other application (Line, WeChat, GTalk, Skype) you can talk via phone, tablet or PC, and with WhatsApp I have to message my friends with a tiny phone screen while my wonderful desktop keyboard and dual monitors sit there laughing at me.

Threema comes to my mind:

https://threema.ch/en/

Unfortunately, Threema is not FOSS either.

Unfortunately, like Whatsapp, it's also only one device per account.

Silent Circle is a good alternative. I work for them, so I can recommend them, but I can't speak for how secure the other products are.

The apps developed by Moxie Marlinspike also seem good to me, I've used RedPhone and it's pretty nice. The texting app sends SMS, though, it doesn't go through the Internet, so it might not be what you're looking for.

I agree that Silent Circle is a good alternative. There's just one worry:

Silent Circle's mail service was shut in the aftermath of the Lavabit shutdown. Why shouldn't that happen to the messaging service? What's the difference?

The mail service was impossible to transparently make end-to-end secure (because of the nature of email), the other services already are. SC felt that, if it can't be end-to-end secure, it shouldn't be offered at all.

TextSecure should release a new version soon that is able to use the device data channel instead of SMS.

Why not create an account at a Jabber service (like dukgo.com) and use a free Jabber client like Xabber, Beem, Gibberbot? Separate contact lists, standards compliant, OTR support…

jabber is, for various reasons, not a good solution for mobile platforms. to be able to receive messages a client has to be always online, not something you want ;) ...and also quite battery consuming.

if jabber worked, we wouldn't be talking about whatsapp/hemlis/threema.

Not until they implement real end to end encryption, like OTR.

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