I have not found any news article on this on a whim. Because my friends and family, I need to use Facebook Messenger, and Messenger Lite was a OK client - lightweight, no unnecessary features, etc., compared to the regular Messenger app.
Now I'm a little torn, having a Meta app on my phone is already bad, but having to downgrade to the bloated Messenger app? Not sure I will make a change. What are your thoughts?
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You mentioned "plain text" specifically - where else would they be holding those plain texts?
So far, there is no evidence to suggest your messages are stored in plain text. And in 2015, Telegram was using MTProto 1.0 for their cloud chat encryption and Secret Chats E2EE. It's been about 5-6 years since they've upgraded to MTProto 2.0 which has been proven to be a sound encryption protocol.
It was Moxie Marlinspike that also made the claim messages are stored in plain text on Telegram's server with no evidence. And so far, the only thing we have are hypotheticals and nothing of substance to support that claim.
The audit done in 2020 goes over how Telegram encrypts their cloud chats and those encryption keys are not stored on the same servers. While E2EE is preferable, the reason why Telegram works the way it does is because how messages are handled by default.
Hopefully soon they will roll out Secret Group chats. But I do like we all have the option to use Telegram however we want.
If you (user 1) are talking with your friend (user 2) through me (telegram) and I have the encryption keys, then for me (telegram) communications are essentially in plain text. I can even encrypt them 100 times... I have the keys and can read your (user 1 + user 2) messages.
You're again talking about storing messages (not sure why). Telegram might encrypt their storage (I never claimed they didn't), but they have the keys and therefore can read what's stored. They also have the keys for the messages, so there's no hypotheticals or claims here: they have the keys for everything, so they can read everything.
E2EE is opt-in and currently only available for direct chats. Unless you manually start a "secret chat", there's no E2EE MTProto 2.0 to help you. They can read everything.
So... Telegram has the keys to decrypt your messages?
I mean, it's not hard to understand. The party that holds the keys can read the messages.