How many people do you know who use Telegram “because it is secure and encrypted”? The problem is that this is technically incorrect. Fact: Telegram operates with a two-chat system: Cloud Chat, which is the default, and in which the keys are saved on Telegram servers - meaning that Telegram can read your messages. The second type is Secret Chat, which is actually encrypted, but must be activated manually.
The worst? Since Pavel Durov’s arrest in 2024, Telegram has agreed to share user data with legal authorities upon request, including username, IP address, and time.
What about groups? All group messages without full encryption. Secret Chat does not work in groups at all.
And the most dangerous: An independent investigation in 2025 revealed that parts of Telegram’s infrastructure were run by companies with close ties to the Russian intelligence service, the FSB.
Telegram is not a privacy app — it is a convenient social media app, and the “security” slogan is just marketing. Real alternatives: Signal/ Matrix/ SimpleX/

  • Artwork@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    1 month ago

    Holy gracious smokes… Why don’t people read… and the call people “liers”? How indifferent and echo-chambered you must be to act as these people who “heroically reveal” already known, proving that they have no idea what they are talking about, sorry?

    The “Secret Chat” encryption has been known for at least a decade and more…

    Secret chats are meant for people who want more security than the average fella. All messages in secret chats use end-to-end encryption. This means only you and the recipient can read those messages — nobody else can decipher them, including us here at Telegram. Messages cannot be forwarded from secret chats. You can also order your messages to self-destruct in a set amount of time after they have been read by the recipient. The message will then disappear from both your and your friend’s devices.

    One last difference between secret and ordinary chats in Telegram is that secret chats are not stored in our cloud. You can only access messages in a secret chat from their device of origin.

    Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20141026204847/https://telegram.org/faq#secret-chats [2014-10-26]

    Please… please, dear authors of these “reveals”, as @archipc@lemmy.ml… please consider you being tricked by competitors of Telegram who also “reveal” nonsense just for people like you…

    And please… check your sources… make personal researches… stop believing the first “news” you read…

    Meanwhile, please do indeed reveal some respect and self-confidence, and check:
    - https://core.telegram.org/mtproto#general-description
    - https://core.telegram.org/bug-bounty

    • archipc@lemmy.mlOP
      21·
      1 month ago

      You’re right that Secret Chat isn’t new — and I never claimed it was. The point is that default chats are NOT encrypted, and most users never touch Secret Chat. Knowing a feature exists ≠ using it. The “reveal” is for the average user who thinks Telegram = privacy by default. That’s the real problem.

      • Artwork@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        1 month ago

        Telegram never claimed the default E2E exists. Nor it never ever suggested that in advertisings. They only stated that the protocol payload in non-secret chats is secure in traffic between open-source clients and their cloud, if ever monitored (e.g. MITM).

        Those “average” who assume security don’t need security but common sense and do their manual research prior trust random articles and “reveals” like yours, and this is what you should teach for if you have time for it and desire; this would at least be actually appreciated, valued, and make a dear change in the infinitely magnificent world, dear @archipc@lemmy.ml …

        If you will ever be actually interested, please check the following:

        Telegram generates a long-term identifier, called auth_key_id, on every client device. This identifier does not change depending on where the client is connecting from.
        Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20260326213422/https://rys.io/en/179.html