Sure, fuck WhatsApp, but Telegram isn't even end-to-end encrypted most of the time. Their group chats never are, and their "secret chat" encryption for non-group chats must be explicitly enabled and hardly ever is because it disables some features. And when it is encrypted, it's with some dubious nonstandard cryptography.

It's also pseudo open source; they do publish source code once in a while but it never corresponds to the binaries that nearly everyone actually uses.

And the audacity to talk about metadata when Telegram accounts still require a phone number today (as they did five years ago when this post was written) is just... 🤯

State-sponsored exploits against WhatsApp might be more common than against Telegram, or at least we hear about them more, but it's not because the app is more vulnerable: it's because governments don't need to compromise the endpoint to read your Telegram messages: they can just add a new device to your account with an SMS and see everything.

(╯° °）╯︵ ┻━┻

Anything claiming to prioritize privacy yet asking for your phone number (Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, ...) is a farce.

What a load of hipocrisy. The dude uses unauthenticated DH for his apps "secret chats", which a bored student with a laptop can MITM in seconds. Other chats use just TLS, meaning they get to read EVERYTHING.

Use Signal, people.

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"Here's what someone who has never created a private messenger thinks about Whatsapp's privacy."

Why would anyone care about what he has to say? 💀

Clicking the link gives me the following warning:

The site ahead may contain harmful programs

Firefox blocked this page because it might try to trick you into installing programs that harm your browsing experience (for example, by changing your homepage or showing extra ads on sites you visit).

WhatsApp's e2e encryption is based on the Signal protocol and active by default. Telegram's is opt-in. So much for Telegram's superior privacy...

He writes as if signal's devs would have to be quiet about whatsapps encryption

E.g.

Last year, the founders of WhatsApp left the company due to concerns over users’ privacy [16]. They are surely tied by either gag orders or NDAs, so are unable to discuss backdoors publicly without risking their fortunes and freedom. They were able to admit, however, that "they sold their users' privacy" [17].

Yet signal published multiple posts about how secure whatsapp is. I don't buy it but it's not like they would be quiet. (They=moxie) https://signal.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/ https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

WhatsApp will be never private and secure, while Telegram will be never private. 😁

I'm not qualified enough to argue, but I wouldn't trust Durov. He's a competitor, after all. And he has a history of questionable decisions.

This is a very good reminder why one should worry about the new messaging standard for interoperability.

WhatsApp users resilient enough not to fall for constant popups telling them to back up their chats can still be traced by a number of other tricks – from accessing their contacts’ backups to invisible encryption key changes [13]. The metadata generated by WhatsApp users – logs describing who chats with whom and when – is leaked to all kinds of agencies in large volumes by WhatsApp’s parent company [14].

It even might result in me thinking that we should have to ban facebook from entering the fediverse because people are lazy and don't switch to the real fediverse if they can see your posts and contact you directly.

Guys, please stop using telegram if you care for your security and privacy

Telegram is not fully open source, sometimes they release the source, but the hashes of the builds don't even match (so it's a different source code) 🚩

Zero transparency about data handling, even when they get caught they don't tell details 🚩 (Telegram in the recent years has got really shady reputation)

Very often ways they implement security is weird: non open source app, non open source server, leaking APIs, use of phone numbers, at some point they started asking for an email, non encrypted chats by default, never encrypted group chats.. it can continue forever 🚩

Non-standard encryption is a real red flag, non-open-source 🚩

I know some people that work/worked for the police, and they can read all the messages easy peasy, i was trying to tell to the people many years ago, but everyone was so amused by the stickers. Now you can just read stories of the journalists and activists, and how they got imprisoned with the use telegram 👁️‍🗨️💀

PLEASE, STOP USING TELEGRAM IF YOU CARE FOR YOUR PRIVACY OR SECURITY