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For private chats Telegram uses end-to-end encryption and they cannot read the chats. Of course, they control the clients though, so they could update their clients to also send the chats to Russian intelligence and it would be hard for anyone to notice.

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Telegram isn't E2E encrypted by default.

You need to choose an "encrypted" chat.

They have been criticised over this for many years now.

Also desktop telegram client doesn't have e2e, only mobile one.

Which is why I can't use it because most of my messages are sent from desktop.

The macOS client supports end-to-end encryption.

Yes I would think intelligence agencies should prefer Telegram over other encrypted chat providers since there's at least this possibility of leaking.

Maybe this will have the unintended consequence of moving users to a more secure and censorship-resistant alternative.

Yeah, I thought it's supposed to be e2e-encrypted, so I was confused by this statement. I guess it make sense if he means they refused to add a backdoor like you say.

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