How is it compared to telegram?
In other words, Telegram doesn't even deserve to be in the same conversation. Even if it had the best encryption out there (however you define that), that wouldn't mean anything when it's not used in like 98% of the cases (percentage pulled out of my ass).
It's like comparing Signal to Facebook's Messenger, and I'd still say Messenger over Telegram because at least it uses Signal's protocol under the hood (I believe the feature is called hidden conversations) instead of inventing its own thing and ignoring the expert opinions.
Granted I've never used WhatsApp, but I've been using Signal for like 5 years now on my phone and on my laptop with absolutely no issues.
WhatsApp is a total joke, it loses media (IIRC this includes audio messages as well) people send you after a very short time even when you use it on a single device, so talking about multi-device usage is completely out of the overton window.
(for any sensible definition of multi-device)
Meanwhile, the Telegram desktop client is at feature-parity with the phone app with both running entirely independently on as many devices as you want.
I would also state that it is unfair to compare an app that doesn't have to worry about your privacy and solving real engineering problems vs basically making a web app that can easily sync your data because it's all stored on someone else's computer.
If that's the level of privacy you're setting you may as well use email for communicating. It's federated, it's easy to use, and everybody has one.
All that said, I do agree the Signal desktop app needs some work, but they'll get there eventually, and in the meantime I don't have to wonder if any of my data will be leaked to anyone outside of my intended recipient.
Funny you say that because Signal is the one with a crappy Electron app which is definitely a deal breaker for me. I mean I lose E2E with Telegram but gain really well designed and featureful platform apps that are native and non-gimped desktop apps (and a functional linux client. Signal's Ubuntu client just crashed for me).
[1] https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/md-architectural-overview-i...
In practice it works by each device having their own encryption key and then those devices are bound together with a cross signing key, so your peer can robustly identify all your devices at once (and the list of devices can change as long as they are bound by the cross signing key). Certainly the server is able to correlate device ids (and thus keys) and IPs.
The way threema does it sounds a bit how room encryption works in Matrix amond multiple clients.
It tries to have feature-parity to WhatsApp; looks the same, works the same. All this while researching innovations on cryptography that doesn't compromise user experience too much.
In my experience, doing exactly what WhatsApp does (but safer) makes it an easy sell to people around me.
Other than that it's definitely a great alternative.
Ever heard the first rule of encryption? "Never roll your own crypto". Well they broke the rule and they won't let anyone check if the crypto is secure or not.
Not to mention encryption is off by default and your plaintext messages are stored on their servers...
https://telegram.org/privacy#3-3-your-messages https://telegram.org/privacy#4-1-storing-data
They have the encryption key, so the difference is not huge.
So I personally don't even know if I'll keep fighting for my privacy and stuff or if I'm going to give up now. I don't want to, but I honestly don't imagine how on Feb08 I will be telling people who aren't my close friends or co-workers, but communication with whom is really valuable to me, that I refuse to join any WhatsApp group chats anymore, so they will have to notify me about anything important (important to me, in he first place!) personally via SMS, Telegram, email, whatever. Especially now, when people are forced to communicate remotely and stuff gets cancelled/renewed/delayed because of another round of idiotic government regulations, so if I'll fall out of these communities, I'm pretty much left in the vacuum and won't know about anything that happens.