Security Aspect in Instant Mobile Messaging Applications

Instant mobile messaging applications are one of the most popular applications for communication between the users. The applications initiates' message sending via internet, making it cost free for the users. Sending of messages can be in any form either a text message or it can initiate voice call. Almost all of these applications offer different built in features which makes the apps appealing to the user but in majority of cases, the app developer's neglect security feature of their usage. Security as one of the important factor plays a vital role for measuring quality of mobile applications. So, it's important to identify level of security services provided by these apps. This research paper presents a study on current security features of popular instant mobile messaging applications and also discusses the reason to focus more on security aspects for improving the overall quality of these applications.

I. Introduction

Chatting applications have already spread their roots all over the world. They are ubiquitous. Almost every Smartphone user uses these applications on a daily basis. Their tempting offers and attractive features make it even more difficult for Smartphone users to escape them. There are millions of Smartphone available in the market with different operating systems [21]. They have the capability of installing different applications on them in order to be able to perform many tasks, such as messaging. Wi-Fi networks showed a tremendous increase in the last few years. According to a study, by the end of year 2020, there will be thrice the number of broadband subscribers then they are today [25].