Encrypted Voice Calls

 

There are several apps available to encrypt your text messages, and I encourage you to use one or more of those apps to help protect your messages. However, not all communication is by written message. In many cases we make voice calls, but can these calls be encrypted?

 

Many of the apps that I recommend for protecting your written messages will also encrypt your voice calls. With any encryption app, what is most important is end-to-end encryption. You must control the encryption keys to ensure security of your communications. If the encryption keys are controlled by the service provider (as with Skype) that provider has the ability to decrypt and read / listen to your private communications.

 

For secure voice communications, I recommend three apps:

 

Signal Messenger - https://signal.org/

WhatsApp - https://www.whatsapp.com/
Wire Messenger - https://wire.com/en/

 

Each of these apps has a large number of users (WhatsApp claims over 1-Billion users), is easy to use, and provides good security for both text and voice communications.

 

Regardless of the app you choose for secure communications, it is important to understand that everyone with whom you wish to communicate securely must be using the same app. This is fairly easy with a small group, but may be more difficult to coordinate as the group of people you call becomes larger. You may end up using more than one app to communicate securely with different groups (i.e. WhatsApp with family, but Signal Messenger with work colleagues).

 

There are other apps that also provide encrypted voice communication. Examples include Pryvate Now and Telegram.  Apple FaceTime provides end-to-end encrypted video chats, but is only available for the iOS operating system. While not as popular Signal, WhatsApp, and Wire; these other apps may have additional features that fulfill your personal communications needs.