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Add to SafariWickr vs Delta Chat
When comparing Wickr vs Delta Chat, the Slant community recommends Delta Chat for most people. In the question“What are the best cross-platform encrypted messaging apps?” Delta Chat is ranked 5th while Wickr is ranked 6th.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Doesn't require a phone number
Unlike most, you can use your phone but you don't have to. You can register without giving anything and add contacts either via e-mail (only) or phone number.
Pro Content shredder
Wickr has a feature that not only erases all messages, but also overwrites them with junk data.
Pro Can find other users securely
Instead of using usernames, emails or phone numbers to find other users, Wickr uses hashes derived from phone numbers or email addresses (this applies to the find friends functionality only). Hashes are the result of a one-way cryptographic function, meaning it's purposefully difficult to reconstruct original data (phone numbers and email addresses in this case) from them. For Wickr, hashes are generated on the client's side so that no personal information is ever sent to the Wickr servers. The app finds people on your contact list that also use Wickr by comparing the hashes that get generated from contacts and comparing them to the hashes that are stored on Wickr servers.
Pro Group messaging
Pro Messages have user-defined lifespan
Messages can have a lifespan between 3 seconds and 6 days. Received messages arrive locked. Once they are opened by the recipient, a timer starts counting down until the message is deleted. Of course, the recipient can still copy them or take a screenshot.
Pro By default, doesn't allow taking screenshots
Wickr disables the screenshot functionality altogether when the app is open. However, there are ways to circumvent this, as if the user has a rooted phone and has installed apps to overide this block or if a screenshot is taken via some apps that project the screen to a PC.
Pro Includes a basic photo editor
The editor allows cropping images, drawing and writing text on them as well as add decorations.
Pro No phone number required
Pro Open Source
Pro No registration required
Pro PGP-encrypted via Autocrypt Guideline
Pro Uses well-established protocols
Everyone knows/uses Email.
Pro Distributed architecture
There is no central Delta Chat server.
Pro You can forward a message from one chat to another
Pro You can share a document, a file, an image, an audio even with applications outside Delta Chat
Pro Multi account
Pro Disappearing messages
It has messages that disappear automatically.
Pro Independent video chat
You can use Jitsi Meet or other providers.
Pro You can reply privately
When you are in a group and want to comment privately on a person's sentence, press and hold on the sentence and click on reply privately. The user will be notified with the quoted and commented sentence. If he clicks on the quoted sentence it will take him to the group and to the position where he wrote this sentence.
Pro You can create broadcast lists
It will be present in the next version.
Pro Bots can be created
Without needing to have a space on a server, just a simple PC and an email for the bot.
Pro You can send stickers and animated stickers
Pro You can decide to set a limit for the size of messages that will be downloaded automatically
Pro You can set a ringtone for each chat
Cons
Con Partially Open source
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Con Small user base
Wickr claims that one million users have downloaded the app with no information on how many active users they have. But even if every person that has downloaded the app is an active user, the userbase is really small compared to apps like WhatsApp that boast about hundreds of millions of active users.
Con Email providers "recipents" per day limitation
Unless you control or run your own email server.
