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this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
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Cybersecurity
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I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? The people that claim "Telegram is unencrypted" seem to be of the belief that literal plaintext is flying over the air for anyone with a mediocum of knowledge to easily intercept, and that's just not true.
Lacking end-to-end encryption does not mean it lacks any encryption at all, and that point seems to escape most people.
To take it to its logical conclusion you can argue that Signal is also "unencrypted" because it needs to be eventually in order for you to read a message. Ridiculous? Absolutely, but so is the oft-made opine that Telegram is unencrypted.
The difference is that Telegram stores a copy of your chats that they themselves can decrypt for operational reasons. It's up to the user to decide whether the additional functionality that comes with this is worth the risk of a hostile agent successfully requisitioning those chats directly from Telegram themselves, rather than just busting through your door and threatening to break your legs if you don't unlock your phone.
On the other hand, if you fill your Telegram hosted chats with a whole load of benign crap that nobody could possibly care about and actually use the "secret chat bullshit" for your spicier chats then you have plausible deniability baked right in.
Not using end-to-end encryption is the equivalent of using best practice developed nearly 30 years ago [1] and saying "this is good enough". E2EE as a default has been taking off for about 10 years now [2], that Telegram is going into 2025 and still doesn't have this basic feature tells me they're not serious about security.
Ridiculous? Yes, you're missing the entire point of end-to-end encryption, which you immediately discredit any security Telegram wants to claim:
Telegram (and anyone who may have access to their infrastructure, via hack or purchase) has complete access to view your messages. This is what E2EE prevents. With Telegram, someone could have access to all your private messages and you would never know. With E2EE someone would need to compromise your personal device(s). One gives you zero options to protect yourself against the invasion of your privacy, the other lets you take steps to protect yourself.
The problem here is that you should not be mixing secure contexts with insecure ones, basic OPSEC. Signal completely mitigates this by making everything private by default. The end user does not need to "switch context" to be secure.
[1] Developed by Netscape, SSL was released in 1995 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security#SSL_1.0,_2.0,_and_3.0
[2] Whatsapp gets E2EE in 2014, Signal (then known as TextSecure, was already using E2EE) - https://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/
Yeah that's cool and all but you're strawmanning. Your original comment, that I hear parroted a lot, is that Telegram is (basically) unencrypted, and regardless of your feelings about the suitability of MTProto (not SSL) that's patently untrue.
There's no evidence that MTProto has ever been cracked, nor any evidence of them selling or allowing anyone access to their servers and recent headline news backs this up. Whether you choose to trust them with your data is up to the individual to decide. I'm just tired of seeing the "Telegram is unencrypted" claim in every instant messaging thread, made by people who don't know or care to know the difference between encryption and E2E encryption.
Google, on the other hand, routinely allow "agencies" access to their servers, often without a warrant, and WhatsApp - who you cite as a good example of E2E encryption - stores chat backups on GDrive unencrypted by default. They added the option to encrypt last year but nobody was forced (or possibly even asked?) to turn it on, and to this day no encryption of backups is still the default. And while you might encrypt your backups, can you be sure the same is true for the people on the other end of your chats?
The entire point is that you shouldn't have to put your trust that a third party (Telegram or whoever takes over in the future) will not sell/allow access to your already accessible data.
Just because it's not happening now does not mean it cannot happen in the future. If/when they do get compromised/sold, they will already have your data; it's completely out of your control.
Exactly my point. Google are using the exact same "security" as Telegram. Your data is already compromised. Side note - supposedly RCS chats between Android is E2EE although I wouldn't trust it as, like Telegram, you're mixing high/low security context, which is bad OPSEC.
Valid concern, but this threat exists on almost every single platform. Who's to stop anyone from taking screenshots of all your messages and not storing them securely?
[1] https://www.tomsguide.com/news/whatsapp-encrypted-backups