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What's with Telegram? Heard mixed opinions on it.
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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Privacy
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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.
False. If you want to tell how things works, get your facts right!
All data sent to Telegram's servers will be encrypted once they reach the servers. With other words, the messages and media and other files, will be sent in "plain text" over HTTPS only when using Cloud Chat. In Secret Chat, MTProto is (based on how E2EE works) as safe as what Signal Protocol is.
But nothing will be stored in plain text, no matter what you use (Cloud Chat or Secret Chat).
But(!) since the source code for MTProto is closed, we don't know how it really works, and if we can trust their FAQ or not.
I trusted Telegram at first, but I don't trust it 100% anymore (still better than SMS). Am using my own Snikket server these days. Much safer with a lot of 😌😊😍😃 moments, even today, maybe a year later. Especially with OMEMO (Signal Protocol).
Except for "secret chat" (which are only 1-on-1 chats, have flaky client support, and require both participants to be online at the same time to initiate; in other words, they are near useless) - this is just simple at-rest storage encryption. They possess the keys to decrypt your messages (again, except for secret chats), because that is necessarily what happens when they serve those messages to recepients.
and who generated the key?
After doing a quick scan of their FAQ, there's nothing about who generated the key. So my wild guess is the client. I bet their source code can answer that question, but I have no clue.
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 or SimpleX.
Thanks.
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.
So, no Whatsapp alternative? Sorry, I'm kinda slow.
If you don't understand the cryptography enough that you have to ask about telegram, just use Signal. It's the best designed app for the security of most people, it doesn't have any privacy/security footgun, and has a pretty good threat model while not cutting corners on usability.
Oh, thanks.