But somehow people started using it because it was "more secure" than whatsapp.
Any proof? If you're calling MTProto 2.0 'insecure' then you should know it's already been audited multiple times in the last 2 years. If insecure means not using E2EE, then I guess the whole infrastructure of the internet is insecure.
> It's not even anonymous
It's more anonymous than Signal is. It requires phone number to register but you don't need to share a phone number or any personal detail to communicate with people.
Telegram has amazing user experience. It's available for any platform, the messages are always backed up, the apps are high quality and responsive and they have great features for group messaging and group organization. They even give you a library you can build your own Telegram client with.
It's *great to use* - something that Signal people never prioritized and always rather pushed their sometimes horrible preferences down peoples throats.
> If you're calling MTProto 2.0 'insecure' then you should know [...]
If you're calling "secret chats" the default, then you should ask around or try to use telegram on desktop or just open telegram and see how much stuff is actually encrypted.
My UK-based employer seems nonchalant about expecting me to agree to be subject to the laws and courts of California in order to receive internal company newsletters delivered via a 3rd party.
While I agree this is harmful to the user (or unpatriotic, if you prefer), it's extremely common thanks to the state of the global economy since the 1980s.
I'd wager that 99% of people in the UK would now be unable to contact their friends and family without relying on at least 1 large U.S. company.
MTProto is the name of the:
1. Cloud Encryption
2. E2E encryption
algorithm at Telegram. MTProto 2.0 is not just secret chats, a different implementation is used for cloud: https://core.telegram.org/mtproto/AJiEAwIYFoAsBGJBjZwYoQIwFM...
Both cloud and e2ee consist of what's called the MTProto 2.0 algorithm.
In whatsapp, messages have always been on-device / in-memory, where they belong, doing a p2p sync/transfer
> 1. Is There a Secret Chat On Telegram Desktop?
> No. Due to Telegram secret chat's end-to-end encryption and the requirement for permanent storage on the device (and not using the Cloud to store data), Telegram does not have the secret chat feature on Desktop or Web Telegram. They may add this feature on their desktop version in the future, but for now, it is not safe enough to have it.
Whatsapp has caught internationally but it's Facebook and its desktop app is a crashing dumpster fire.
Viber is another popular app, but has too many ads and visual noise.
Telegram has caught on as a good alternative for all, because it does everything good. Apps are functional, fast and stable. Interface is clean. Also Telegram channels were genius idea to increasing market penetration. Nowadays all social networks are heavily abused by bot abusing abuse feature (hehe). Basically any post containing "politics" let alone "war" content can be taken down by abuse spam. Be it facebook, twitter or reddit, all the same. So political and social "influencers" are rapidly creating backup or new main channels in the Telegram to post "controversial" information, and people reading news and blogs in Telegram will also message there too.
Of course, it's not really "anonymous" if a nation-state wants to come after you, but that's not the threat model for most people.
maybe now that signal is switching off SMS it can implement user handles that people can share instead of their number. once they do i'll give it a try
Matrix can't even load 100 old messages properly with E2EE enabled in a room. Signal can't even handle scale when it comes to chat groups and communities. There's no anonymity in both either as Signal doesn't even allow you to hide your phone number and Matrix leaks your metadata to all involved participants like crazy.
Telegram doesn't use E2EE but the privacy and security are in no way compromised.
The whole fuss about "They can read your messages" holds a very negative assumption in the first place about them reading it and then also assumes everybody's threat model involves inferior UX of managing chat backups like WhatsApp just to keep messages away from cloud.
Just take a look at your threat model and decide what you want, not everybody wants an E2E encrypted chat app because we know the compromises that we have to make with E2EE and I'd rather have my chats on cloud encryption than my local device, considering how many features Telegram allows me to have with cloud sync.
Oh, no, please! What I want is the other way around: turning Signal into Telegram, i.e. keep bolting features onto Signal until it has feature parity with Telegram, or even what Telegram did five years ago. That would be a dream.
I disagree that e2ee can fundamentally not deliver Telegram's experience, at least not far off. It may need more local processing and indexing (storage), but generally it's all possible. It's just a ton of work that Telegram has sunk many millions into and will cost even more to do securely.
What you are absolutely wrong about, however, is claiming that it's all the same.
> Telegram doesn't use E2EE but the privacy and security are in no way compromised.
There are various scenarios in which your data on Signal is safe in ways that it is not on Telegram, and more actors can see your data on Telegram than on Signal. Thus, both security and privacy are impacted. That much is plain as day. Whether that is worth the trade-off, is up to you.
It's fine to have opinions and a conversation about whether the whole e2ee concept is silly, but please don't give your friends and family false senses of what the practical impact is for privacy and security when choosing these trade-offs by saying it's all just as safe and identical.