Facebook is planning to merge Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, which makes it even more awful of a choice.
Facebook can't read your WhatsApp messages (of course they can add an update any time to do that), but Telegram has access to all your messages right now.
¹ Yes, you can select the end-to-end encrypted sessions, but they're very crippled from a usability perspective. I don't remember the last time anyone used it with me, yet all my chats on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted without anyone doing anything.
Are we sure it can't? Because WhatsApp is closed-source, its GDrive backups are unencrypted and Facebook's whole profit model is based around snooping. Unless they make the app open-source, I'm not trusting them even with a grocery list. People act like E2E is the be-all and end-all but trusting an incredibly shady company on its word is not something I'm comfortable with.
GDrive backups are not readable by Facebook, they're readable by Google. End-to-end, if properly implemented is the be-all and end-all. Except for metadata, which is a problem, but a different one, and Facebook definitely abuses that. But they don't/can't read the contents of chat messages (for now).
It's not merely trusting that shady company, but also realizing that the news of FB not having E2E-encrypted messages would definitely make the news, you'd be aware of it.
Right.. consider what your adversary would be giving up by revealing such a secret, even if it was true. That alone provides a not-insubstantial amount of security.
> Are we sure it can't?
Google can remotely uninstall, and install a trojaned version of any app regardless of app signature on an official Android distribution.
No, there's a 1..2% chance of backdoor.
The real question is, why is Telegram more secure? There's a 100% chance it can read your group messages, because it says so on their documentation that describes the cloud encryption. There is no E2EE at all for groups. There is no E2EE at all for desktop. Together these mean E2EE are completely neutered and useless. I'm a privacy researcher and I don't use them at all. Why would an average joe?
Open source means anyone can audit and verify nothing was done after audit.
Moxie more or less audited WhatsApp's Signal protocol implementation, and people are right to be concerned about whether changes have been made since FB bought the app.
Facebook does get your WhatsApp communication metadata, and has been for years now. As the three letter agencies showed, metadata is actually quite valuable in many respects without needing to trawl through massive amounts of content.
The fact Telegram's E2EE has not been available
1. by default
2. on desktop apps
3. for group messages
for seven years tells you exactly how secure it is.
"the only other criticism comes from a direct competitor"
Fuck this attitude. Everyone has the right to criticize. If Telegram can't own their mistakes it's their fault, not that of the people who are beating them. Also, impartial professional cryptographers like Bruce Schneier and Matthew Green have told people not to use Telegram. Why is that if not because it's so horribly insecure. Why isn't there a single recommendation for Telegram from ANY cryptographer on the entire planet?
"they recommend WhatsApp despite the fact that it's closed-source and nobody can verify if its encryption truly works."
Because they've helped implement the encryption? Also if proprietary tools doing encryption are not secure, then why do Telegram users think it's ok for Telegram to use closed-source server that's doing the "distributed datacenter encryption" for group messages' at-rest protection. There's not even documentation available for this let alone source code.
Really? I haven't seen a single credible audit, nor a clear reason for rolling their own
> Some of its channels helped unconnected, scattered rallies mature into well-coordinated action.
This line alone makes their encryption rather meaningless for this use case, since Secret Chats only work between two people.
This has nothing to do with secure chats and everything to do with Telegram's Channels feature. But a ton of people that have never used Telegram nor read the article don't know that.
A multitude of proxies, shadow optic cables over the border and a bit of whitelisting from the government to allow payment processing made Telegram invincible.