Is Bip More Secure Than Whatsapp?

Two days ago, the leadership of the (Sultan Muhammad al-Fateh) Division of the Syrian National Army issued an administrative order for its members to delete (WhatsApp) from smart devices and activate (Bip).

The management of the subordinate division gave its brigades, battalions and fighters a four-day deadline to implement the order issued on January 11 by its commander under penalty of responsibility, indicating in its statement - which was verified by the (Verify) platform - that the order came due to the new update in the privacy policy That we will impose (WhatsApp) as of next month.

Fighters from the armed Syrian opposition confirmed to Verify-Sy platform that similar orders were issued by other factions belonging to the opposition Syrian National Army, coinciding with the announcement by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday, January 12th, that the application of (Bip) and (Telegram), on his official Facebook page.

The Turkish messaging application (Bip) has witnessed great demand in recent days, after the application of WhatsApp announced its intention to make a change in the privacy policies of its customers.

The Turkish Anadolu Agency quoted statements issued by the "Turkcell" company, which owns the Turkish application, on Monday, January 11, saying that the last three days witnessed 4.6 million new users subscribing to the locally developed "Bip" application.

What data does (Bip) collect?

We asked this question to a Syrian engineer, Ramy Hanano, who works as a digital security consultant, and he answered that the (Bip) application does not mention on its website that it uses (end-to-end) encryption technology, which means that the messages and data sent by the application user can only be viewed by the sender is the other party, and this technology is used in the (WhatsApp) application and will remain in use in it even after the application of the new privacy policy, therefore WhatsApp is considered safer than (Bip) in terms of privacy of messages.

Hanano pointed out that (Bip) actually collects data that (WhatsApp) will start collecting after the entry into the new privacy policy with it into application, in addition to that (Bip) stores a copy of the contents of the correspondence that takes place in it from correspondence, pictures, videos and audio clips but WhatsApp doesn't keep it at all.

The Syrian engineer explained that this leaves the users' data completely at the mercy of the company serving the application (Bip), and the matter of adherence to the Turkish Personal Data Protection Law known as (KVKK) becomes up to the company, in addition to that it may be forced to provide user data to the Turkish authorities based on a court order or under other pressure as long as The data is preserved.

Comparing (Bip) application with the most famous similar applications

Verify-Sy platform searched websites specialized in digital security, which periodically issue reports and reviews of the most popular applications used in instant chatting and communication, such as (WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage, Viber, Signal) and other similar applications, so it did not find references in English about the application ( Bip) being a Turkish app developed by Turkish engineers in the year 2013.

We used the Turkish language to search for references on the Turkish messaging application (Bip), and we reached a report published by the information-auditing site Teyit on January 9, during which it compared the data collected by the three most famous messaging applications (WatsApp, Telegram, Signal). In exchange for what the Turkish application (Bip) collects, it turns out that the other three applications collect less data than the Turkish application and are considered safer than it.

The following is a table prepared by the Turkish site Teyit that includes an explanation of the data collected by the aforementioned applications. Verify-Sy platform translated it into English and added an evaluation to it for each application based on the opinion of the consultant in digital security, engineer Ramy Hanano:

Type of data	WhatsApp	Telegram	Signal	Bip
Phone number	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Contacts	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
IMEI	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Approximate location	Yes	No	No	Yes
Location	Yes	No	No	Yes
Purchase history	Yes	No	No	Yes
Videos and photos	No	No	No	Yes
Voice data	No	No	No	Yes
Performance data	Yes	No	No	Yes
Evaluation	Not safe	Relatively safe	Completely safe	Dangerous

 Although the application (Bip) says on its site that it does not share data with other parties, it explicitly indicates that it keeps a copy of it in its possession.

Will (WhatsApp) share the contents of your conversations with others?

The new privacy policy for "WhatsApp" states that the user information that it collects may be shared with other "Facebook" companies "to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support and market their services and offerings."

However, the company says these data-sharing practices are not new. The last update for the privacy of WhatsApp was launched worldwide in 2016. At that time, it provided WhatsApp users the ability to unsubscribe from sharing data with Facebook, an option that was only available for a short period, and in this last update, the option to cancel The subscription that has now expired.

The digital security advisor, engineer Ramy Hanano, explains to the followers of Verify-Sy platform, the new update to the privacy policy, that WhatsApp adopts end-to-end encryption technology, which means that the content of messages, including text, pictures, etc. is encrypted and not even servers can The company itself (Facebook) has to decrypt it to see the contents of these messages, but in return it does not protect what is called additional meta-data, which is every information related to the message, examples of it: the identity of the sender, the identity of the recipient, the identity of the original source of the message, the IP address of the device , Sending and receiving time, message size, group names, group members, geolocation, etc.

Hanano explained that the new WhatsApp - Facebook agreement gives permission to the company to freely use all that information stored about you - meaning meta-data - for example, selling your data to security analysis, political analysis, intelligence, or at the very least advertising companies, and that data sold to governments and companies which pay millions of dollars.

How might using the additional information be dangerous for me?

Ramy Hanano answered the question with a simple example in which he said: Facebook is constantly carrying out a process called (profiling), which means describing each user with a brief description. For example, Yusef is: male, forty married, chemist residing in Istanbul, following Russian news, classifying Financial 9, Yusef sends a lot of letters to so-and-so and periodic letters to so-and-so and appropriate messages to others, therefore, with a few matches, everything is revealed about Yusef, who his employees, suppliers, customers, friends and relatives are, and the degree of his interaction with each of them without the need to know the content of the data that Yusuf sends.

Hanano believes that this information about one person is sufficient to cause any kind of harm to him, such as stealing customers or suppliers, personal problems and many security risks that do not need to be delved into. Therefore, the availability of this information on entire peoples is a dangerous key in making them exploit at all levels.

So what are the tips?

The digital security advisor, Engineer Ramy Hanano, advises followers of the Verify platform to use the (Signal) application and not to use the (Bip) application in the interest of their data and digital security.

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