When WhatsApp updated its privacy policy in early 2021, a wave of users went looking for alternatives, and several names came up repeatedly: Telegram, Signal, and a Turkish app called BiP, which briefly surged in downloads after being mentioned by Turkish officials as a WhatsApp replacement. Several years on, it’s worth revisiting that comparison properly — including a claim about BiP’s security that turns out to be more contested than it first appeared.
What BiP Actually Is
BiP is a messaging app developed by Turkcell, Turkey’s largest mobile operator, through its subsidiary Lifecell. Launched in 2013, it offers text messaging, voice and video calls (including group video calls for up to 15 participants), a “Secret Chat” disappearing-message feature, and a built-in real-time translation feature covering over 100 languages. It surged from roughly 60 million downloads to a stated goal of far more within days of the 2021 WhatsApp privacy policy controversy, adding over a million users in Turkey within 24 hours at the peak of that moment.
One detail worth knowing before evaluating its privacy claims: BiP’s ownership structure includes a Turkish government stake of roughly 26%, alongside private and capital-market ownership. This doesn’t automatically disqualify the app on privacy grounds, but it’s relevant context that the original wave of “BiP is more private” coverage rarely mentioned.
The Encryption Claim, Corrected
This is the part of the original comparison that needs the most significant correction. BiP’s own marketing states that the app is end-to-end encrypted by default for messages and calls. However, independent security review disputes this claim. A technical review by security researcher Ramy Hanano concluded that BiP lacks genuine end-to-end encryption, meaning the server side can potentially access message content — a materially different security model than Signal or WhatsApp, both of which use the independently audited, open-source Signal Protocol for all messages and calls by default. Separately, Turkish media outlet Bianet has reported that BiP’s privacy policy permits storing and sharing user data outside Turkey without the protections true end-to-end encryption would provide.
Turkcell’s own technical documentation describes messages as being “transported securely between devices and servers using the TLS encryption method” — TLS (Transport Layer Security) is a real and legitimate security protocol, but it is not the same guarantee as end-to-end encryption. TLS protects data in transit between your device and the server; genuine end-to-end encryption ensures that not even the service provider can read message content, in transit or at rest.
BiP does offer a separate, longstanding “Secret Chat” feature specifically for messages that self-delete after a set period — a structure that resembles Telegram’s approach (regular chats handled one way, a separate opt-in mode for stronger privacy) more than it resembles Signal or WhatsApp’s approach of strong encryption applied uniformly to every conversation by default.
The honest summary: BiP’s actual privacy architecture is disputed, with the company’s own claims contradicted by outside technical review. This doesn’t necessarily make BiP unsafe for everyday casual use, but it means the claim “more secure than Signal” — made in the original version of this comparison — is not well supported and shouldn’t be repeated as established fact.
It’s worth understanding why this distinction — TLS versus true end-to-end encryption — matters so much in practice. TLS is the same technology that secures a normal HTTPS website connection: it protects data as it travels between your device and the company’s servers, which is genuinely useful and better than sending data completely unencrypted. But it means the company operating those servers can, in principle, still access the unencrypted content once it arrives there, whether for legitimate business purposes, in response to a legal request, or in the event of a server breach.
True end-to-end encryption removes that middle step entirely — the message is scrambled on the sender’s device and only unscrambled on the recipient’s device, meaning the company running the servers genuinely cannot read it even if compelled to. That’s the specific guarantee BiP’s marketing claims but which the referenced independent review disputes.
Correcting Signal’s Origin Story
The earlier version of this comparison also misstated who founded Signal. Signal the app and its underlying technology were created by Moxie Marlinspike (real name Matthew Rosenfeld), a cryptographer and security researcher. Brian Acton — a genuine WhatsApp co-founder who left the company in 2017 over disagreements about data monetization — later co-founded the nonprofit Signal Foundation alongside Marlinspike in 2018, providing its initial $50 million in funding and serving as its Executive Chairman. Acton is a major figure in Signal’s non-profit structure and financing, but Marlinspike created the app itself. The two roles are genuinely different and worth keeping straight, particularly in a comparison explicitly about trustworthiness and technical credibility.
Feature Comparison, With Current Numbers
Group and broadcast limits change over time across all these apps, and the original comparison’s figures are now outdated. Current numbers, as of this rewrite:
| Feature | Signal | Telegram | BiP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group chat limit | 1,024 members | Up to 1,000 members | Up to 200,000 members | Group video calls up to 15 participants |
| Default encryption | End-to-end (Signal Protocol) | End-to-end (Signal Protocol) by default for all messages, calls, and groups | Not end-to-end by default; only opt-in “Secret Chats” are | Disputed — company claims E2EE; independent review says no |
| Channels | No | No | Yes, unlimited members | No |
| Self-destructing messages | Yes (Disappearing Messages) | Yes | Yes, in Secret Chats only | Yes (“Secret Chat”) |
| Real-time translation | No | No | No | Yes, 100+ languages |
A few things worth noting about this table: Telegram’s massive group and channel capacity comes with the tradeoff that regular chats aren’t end-to-end encrypted by default — only manually activated Secret Chats get that protection, and Secret Chats don’t work in groups at all. Signal remains the only one of the four with strong encryption applied automatically to every conversation, verified through independent, repeated audits and a fully open-source codebase, client and server side.
What BiP Actually Does Well
None of the above means BiP is without genuine strengths, and it’s worth being fair about what it does that WhatsApp doesn’t:
- Built-in real-time translation across 100+ languages is a genuinely distinctive feature not found in WhatsApp, Signal, or Telegram.
- Group HD video calling for up to 15 people is a solid, practical feature for group calls, particularly on weaker connections.
- No third-party data sharing for commercial purposes, according to Turkcell’s own stated policy — though this is a company claim, not an independently verified guarantee, the same caveat that applies to any messaging provider’s self-reported privacy practices.
What to Actually Check Before Switching Apps
Rather than relying on any single comparison article — this one included — a few concrete things are worth checking directly before switching a primary messaging app:
Read the actual privacy policy, not just marketing copy. Company blog posts and app store descriptions are marketing material. A privacy policy is a legal document, and discrepancies between the two (as reportedly exists with BiP’s data storage and sharing terms) are exactly the kind of thing worth catching before, not after, you’ve moved your primary conversations to a new app.
Check whether the encryption protocol is open-source and independently audited. This is the single clearest differentiator between the four apps compared here. Signal’s protocol and both client and server code are fully open-source and have been repeatedly, independently audited by outside cryptography researchers. WhatsApp uses the same underlying Signal Protocol but keeps its own client largely closed-source. Telegram uses a custom protocol (MTProto) that has drawn ongoing criticism from cryptographers specifically because it wasn’t built on established, peer-reviewed cryptographic standards the way Signal’s was. BiP’s claims haven’t held up under the one independent technical review referenced above.
Consider who actually needs to be on the app with you. The most secure messaging app in the world is useless if the people you actually need to communicate with won’t switch to it. This is a genuine practical constraint, not a cop-out — WhatsApp’s massive existing user base is a real reason many people stay on it despite Signal’s stronger privacy architecture.
Weigh metadata collection, not just message content encryption. Even apps with strong message encryption can collect substantial metadata — who you talk to, when, how often — which can be revealing on its own even without message content. Signal’s “sealed sender” technology specifically minimizes what even Signal’s own servers can see about who’s messaging whom; this is a meaningfully different privacy guarantee than message encryption alone, and worth understanding as a separate axis when comparing apps rather than treating “encrypted” as a single binary property.
Regional and Political Context Worth Knowing
BiP’s promotion in Turkey came with a notable political dimension the original comparison didn’t mention: the app has been publicly promoted by Turkish officials, including at the presidential level, as a domestic WhatsApp alternative, and its ownership includes a Turkish government stake. This context doesn’t automatically determine whether the app is trustworthy for any individual user’s purposes, but it’s relevant information — particularly for anyone specifically prioritizing message privacy from government access as their primary reason for switching apps, since that consideration cuts in a different direction for an app with partial state ownership than it does for a fully independent nonprofit like the Signal Foundation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is BiP safe to use at all? For casual, everyday conversations, BiP functions like any mainstream messaging app and hasn’t been shown to have consumer-facing security flaws beyond the encryption-model dispute covered above. The concern is specifically about whether it delivers the same message-content privacy guarantee its own marketing claims, not about basic functional safety or malware risk.
Why does the encryption protocol matter if I’m not doing anything sensitive? Even routine conversations reveal patterns worth protecting — who you talk to, when, and how often — and metadata alone can be revealing regardless of message content. More practically, once you’ve chosen an app for convenience, you’re likely to eventually use it for something more sensitive too, so the baseline privacy guarantee matters even for people who don’t think they need it initially.
Did Brian Acton found Signal or WhatsApp? Both, in different senses — he co-founded WhatsApp in 2009 with Jan Koum, then years later co-founded the nonprofit Signal Foundation with Moxie Marlinspike in 2018 and funded it. He didn’t create the Signal app or its underlying protocol; that was Marlinspike’s work.
Has BiP responded to the claims that it lacks true end-to-end encryption? Turkcell’s own public materials continue to state that BiP is end-to-end encrypted. The dispute is between that company claim and the findings of outside technical review — this is worth monitoring for updates from either side rather than treating as permanently settled in either direction.
Which app should I actually switch to? That depends entirely on what you’re optimizing for. If encryption verified through independent audit is the top priority, Signal is the clearest choice among these four. If your contacts are unlikely to switch away from WhatsApp, the practical answer may be staying on WhatsApp despite its metadata collection, since a secure app nobody uses with you isn’t actually protecting your conversations.
The Bottom Line
If genuine end-to-end encryption verified through independent, ongoing security audits is the priority, Signal remains the strongest option among this group, by a clear margin. WhatsApp offers the same underlying Signal Protocol encryption with a much larger existing user base, though it’s owned by Meta and collects considerably more metadata than Signal does.
Telegram trades away default end-to-end encryption for massive group and channel capacity, and BiP’s actual privacy architecture is more contested than its own marketing suggests — a real consideration for anyone choosing it specifically for privacy reasons rather than for its translation feature or regional popularity. The original framing of BiP as simply “better than Signal” doesn’t hold up against independent technical review, and that distinction matters more than a features checklist alone.
