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Comment by ryanlol | Hacker News Reader

>No, the so-called secret chats are end-to-end encrypted and not stored on their servers.

This feels dishonest to me. Nobody ever uses the secret chats because Telegram devs have deliberately made them impossible to use.

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What do you mean "deliberately [...] impossible to use"? Select a contact and choose "Start secret chat", wait for the keys to exchange and then the entire experience is identical to unencrypted chats.

Come on, you know very well that most clients don't support this.

And yeah, having to click "Start secret chat" is deliberately making things difficult. Signal or Whatsapp don't require that.

> Come on, you know very well that most clients don't support this.

supported:

    Telegram for Android
    Telegram for iPhone and iPad
    Telegram for WP
    Telegram for macOS

not supported:

    Telegram for Windows/Mac/Linux
    Telegram for Firefox OS
    Telegram Web-version
    Telegram Chrome app

I guess we have a different definition for "most".

I would guess that usage is definitely below 1%, but it is possible to use them and I am using them from time to time without problems.

The existence of optional secret chats used by nobody, not implemented by apps and actively discouraged by UI, seems like a particularly shit excuse for what Telegram is doing.

> used by nobody

I use it, so it isn't nobody.

> not implemented by apps

It's implemented by the Android and iOS apps, which are the most used ones.

> actively discouraged by UI

How is this actively discouraging? https://img.gadgethacks.com/img/original/18/79/6363832577010...

https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-secure-is-telegram

>Telegram is more secure than mass market messengers like WhatsApp and Line

Why are you defending these fraudsters?

>I use it, so it isn't nobody.

Don't play silly word games, you just said "I would guess that usage is definitely below 1%"

>It's implemented by the Android and iOS apps, which are the most used ones.

Ah, so it'll only fail to work 30% of the time? That's not terrible UX at all.

>How is this actively discouraging?

Why do you have to press a button to chat securely, when the "less secure" WhatsApp does not require that? Is it because of Durovs superior encryption technology?

You simply can't justify that button.

> Why are you defending these fraudsters?

Them being fraudsters doesn't make all of your allegations true.

> Don't play silly word games, you just said "I would guess that usage is definitely below 1%"

So? 0.1% is below 1% and would still correspend to ~200000 users. That is NOT nobody.

> Ah, so it'll only fail to work 30% of the time? That's not terrible UX at all.

Source for the 30%?

> Why do you have to press a button to chat securely, when the "less secure" WhatsApp does not require that?

It's a trade-off. WhatsApp / Telegram's secure-chats are lacking other features Telegram's non-secure chats have.

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