Some people say it’s really privacy-giving and that you should use it as a privacy alternative. Others say it’s alao on the big tech side. What’s going on with telegram, really?
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Some people obviously do not know what they are talking about. Telegram stores clear text chat messages on their servers. That’s not even near privacy
stores clear text chat messages on their servers.
Does it really?
By default, yes. It is possible to create a so-called secret chat, which is standard for signal and similar, but that’s something you have to manually do. Furthermore, it’s not even possible to make secret chats for groups. When it was initially released, I was cautiously optimistic that it could turn into a good, secure application, but knowing it’s been this long and it hasn’t, I wouldn’t consider that likely.
It absolutely doesn’t mean they store chats in plain text. There is no reason for it at all, it’s extra work and extra stupidity. It’s encrypted when the client sends it, no reason not to store it that way.
I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to say here. To clarify, telegram uses a store-forward architecture, meaning that it deletes messages from the server once they have been received by everyone. Until that time, the messages are stored on the server in plaintext, unless you’re using a secret chat. They do this to avoid having to exchange keys between different clients, but what that really means is that it isn’t actually private most of the time.
The only reason people think it is private is because for a long time it refused to corporate with governments (which is why plenty of criminal activity happens there)
It is about the least private option of all modern messaging apps (literally not e2ee, which means that the server owners have potentially full access to all chat content)
The only thing that makes it special is the bot support.
Telegram talks a pretty big privacy game, but consider that the feature that actually enables end-to-end encryption, called “Secret Chats” in the app, is OFF by default. Couple that with everything else said in this thread and you start to see a picture forming. And it’s not pretty.
Every text you send through Telegram is stored in plaintext. Telegram and authorities can access that without your knowledge. Also it will get leaked in a breach someday.
Now you decide for yourself if it’s private.
Woah, thanks.
What should I use, then? Because, from what I seen, Signal is US hosted, and this isn’t very good to privacy.
Signal is well designed enough that Jurisdiction doesn’t matter much. The only things you’ll find that can br arguably better than signal are fully decentralized apps that go over TOR like Briar or Simplex but these have a lot less usage because they’re so slow and terrible for your battery.
