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Anti-government protesters in Belarus, Hong Kong and Iran, Extinction Rebellion activists in Britain, Islamic State terrorists … almost any organized group with something to fear from state officials uses Telegram to communicate.
The messaging app has long prided itself on refusing to release data to officials.
“This is why Telegram is banned by authoritarian governments like Russia and Iran,” said Telegram chief Pavel Durov, who is in exile from Russia after refusing to hand over user data to state officials.
Users, meanwhile, appreciate the privacy message, fluid interface, and public “channels” where like-minded people can discuss shared interests and causes.
And yet, Telegram is a disaster in terms of user privacy, say some security experts.
Even before sending your message, the app sends every piece and draft of text you write to Telegram’s servers in real time, whether you send it or not. The server even has access to a full copy of all chats, according to researchers at the German industry specialist website Heise Security.
Your conversations should be stored exclusively on your own mobile device. The problem: It is unknown what Telegram does with your data, in addition to sending it to another mobile device.
Even WhatsApp offers more privacy guarantees.
There are so-called “secret chats” as a Telegram function, which are protected to prevent third parties from reading them. On its website, Telegram says that if privacy security is an issue for you, you should use these secret chats with a self-destruct timer.
But these features are disabled by default and so well hidden that most Telegram users are unaware of them. Secret chats also have more limited functionality and will not work on more than one device that you own.
Here, too, other messengers are better equipped: Signal, for example, or WhatsApp, which uses Signal’s encryption technology. There are no central chat databases for these two messengers.
The messages are encrypted so that only the actual recipient can open and read them, in other words end-to-end encryption. Chats are also stored only on the owner’s mobile device, never on remote servers that could theoretically be accessed by court order.
But beyond that, we don’t know much about the inner workings of the Facebook-owned app, and it’s quite possible that back doors have been integrated into WhatsApp’s closed-source software.
Furthermore, WhatsApp is gradually becoming more integrated into the Facebook group, which makes billions by processing its users’ data to deliver targeted ads.
As a secure messaging alternative with good encryption, the experts recommend Signal, which is without exception open source software. This means that anyone with the technical knowledge can check out what’s going on behind the scenes at any time.
Additionally, Signal’s infrastructure is operated by a non-profit foundation committed to data protection and funded entirely by donations.
Therefore, there is no financial interest in user data. Telegram, on the other hand, is an opaque business construct, the motives of which are virtually unknown. – dpa
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