"We kill people based on metadata." Gen. Michael Hayden (USAF), former NSA director
The above quote shows the power the right - or wrong - messenger has. It could leak who you talk to, the length of the message, where the message was sent from, the size of the data packet sent, etc.
Think about it like this: You're watching an old movie. One of those black and white things you would probably see starring someone like Humphrey Bogart or Clark Gable. A private eye is hired by a rich man to tail his wife, whom he suspects is cheating on him. The detective gets in his car and waits outside of their residence. He sees the wife leaving at a certain time, take a cab, and go to the beauty salon. He sees her leave the salon, get in another cab, and meet with a couple friends for lunch. After lunch, she takes another cab and goes to this residence on the other side of the city and stays there for a couple hours, leaving, getting in yet another cab, and making it home before her husband does. The detective takes note of all timestamps, cab medallion numbers, addresses, physical description of anyone he saw interact with her (he never left the car so all that information would have to be outside of the building), what physical condition she is apparently in, what she's wearing at the time...all of that is "metadata."
This is why choosing the right messenger is extremely important. A perfect messenger would collect zero data about you, and the good ones only know your phone number and when you created your account (in the infosec world, that's nothing unless you live in a country that banned "burner" phone numbers).
The messengers I do recommend are already listed among the recommended apps, but I'll list them again here:
Honorable mention goes to Line, which is a slightly superior platform to WhatsApp based in Japan and created in the wake of the 2011 earthquake just off the coast of Fukushima prefecture.
And now, messengers I do NOT recommend and why:
If I didn't mention your favorite messenger, please assume it's on the "not recommended" list for some reason. Bring it to my attention and I'll probably find something wrong with it.
If it's not clear by now, I infinitely prefer to communicate over Signal.
I do hope this clarifies a few concerns one may have over why one would insist on not using specific platforms.
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