Ultimately, we need encrypted-by-default messaging based on public/private key pairs (obscured from the uninterested user, of course).
I'd probably even trust FB's unencrypted messenger content to be better protected than telegram.
They clearly have a loyal fan following though.
That said, this idea
> I'd probably even trust FB's unencrypted messenger content to be better protected than telegram.
is ridiculous.
With Facebook you know you will be datamined and the result sold to anyone who wants to buy..
With Telegram maybe Putin reads it, maybe not.
One of them is a threat to my family and friends, the other is not.
If you're using unencrypted messaging you should assume it's public. This is true of FB messenger and Telegram, but if I had to bet on what unencrypted content is more likely to be owned I'd bet on Telegram. This is mostly a bet on where the world's best security people are and the company culture.
Really though we shouldn't be relying on the benevolence of any of these company leaders, that's why people should use Signal or WhatsApp where the encryption means you don't have to (or Urbit where there is no central leader).
In short - you’re posting misinformation.
My point is not that Durov sends data to Putin (I don't think he does).
My point is that there is a lot we don't know about Telegram.
When it comes to WhatsApp and all other Facebook properties we know a lot and much of what we know is ugly.
But yes, I should find a better way to phrase it.
It also sounded like with Telegram there was some abuse of looking up or deleting other employees chats when threatened. The culture of the company doesn’t seem great.
All of this is kind of irrelevant though. The core issue is unencrypted chats.
This is not a fundamental limitation but a default setting in order to preserve privacy. You can easily turn URL previews for a given E2EE room on by going to the room settings > General > scroll down to Other > URL Previews.
I said it many times and I'll say it again: this can't possibly work in the real world, period. People are notoriously terrible with passwords already. So terrible in fact that VKontakte (I worked there, both with Pavel and after he was ousted) had, and still has, a department dedicated to account recovery. And those are passwords, short strings that you can actually remember. You can't possibly expect an average person to keep their private key (a file you can't store in your head) absolutely secret and never lose it at the same time.
In my world, the ability to recover your account if you lose everything is a hard requirement for any product that is meant to reach mass adoption.
The ability to revoke access is also a hard requirement. People share their credentials — it's a fact of life. In the usual setup, you can change your password and terminate sessions. But if your private key is your identity, you can't do shit to prevent someone who has gained access to it from impersonating you for the rest of eternity.
I don't think it matters as much for messenger attached to your phone number. Even if you lose all your conversations you still can be reached by the same identificator and most of your contracts are stored in phonebook anyway.
(outside of certain self-referential bubbles - like this site) no one cares anything about encryption, if in public chats I am anonymous and untraceable (example: no one can know my phone number and there are granular privacy settings) this is enough for 98% of people out here
"yes, encryption is useful if I want to send nudes to my partner or if I want to buy drugs but not while I'm asking mom for the sufflè recipe or I'm organizing a dinner with friends" this is what people think, and they are not completely wrong
I don't know however any groups that use signal as a replacement for any of the above, so do people have experience in migrating groups from those platform to signal?
-not being tied to a phone number
-having a desktop app which doesn't suck (sync issues, connection issues, lacking features, is basically a simple proxy for your phone, etc)
-allows me to use 3rd party apps
-having chat history synced across my apps and devices and backed up. History is immensely important
These days, Threema and Signal don't support the Matrix Protocol.