What is not mentioned... there's no privacy when the device itself is compromised. For instance, Android phones can read and phone home data from your notifications. In that case, any messenger app wouldn't be private from Google's eyes.
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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Privacy
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As much as I'd like to favor foss and federated messenger apps, telegram isn't as much garbage as whatsapp:
1.The client is somewhat open source and have forks like Forkgram, Materialgram and unoffical clients like Telegrand.
2. Telegram isn't E2EE by default but at least it doesn't lie about it and have E2EE secret chat when nessesary, that means crucial chats stay on your device and the rest stay on their database recoverable and syncable across devices.
(Yes, whatsapp supposedly is E2EE but we can't know for sure, it's closed-source.)
3. You can use telegram as a cloud service with only 2GB per file limit, unlike whatsapp.
(There's even a third-party app that utilise this as a cloud gallery.)
4. Even tho telegram has ads in large channels, telegram isn't funded by a greedy big-corp and it doesn't datamine you, ads are based on the channel's topic.
Yes, in terms of privacy, telegram isn't the best option, Signal, Session, XMPP, Matrix, or SimpleX have better privacy features, less linkability and E2EE by default but telegram is very mainstream and got more publicity, making it the whatsapp alternative it advertises itself as-is.
Publicity doesn't make a better messenger app, but for what it tries to do, it's adoptable for simple users, doubles as cloud storage and is more secure than the garbage being whatsapp.
Immigrating users to different apps is a headache on it's own, but if they know of telegram and it's not privacy invasive, that's not bad.
Isn't it possible to verify WhatsApp encryption with packet sniffing?
Yes, but how would you know Meta doesn't have a copy of your encryption key (ex: when you sign up) and keeps a copy of your encrypted messages somewhere?
AFAIK your encryption key resides as whatsapp's data folder but since whatsapp is closed-source you can't guarantee that whatsapp gave the encryption key to Meta's server at some point when it was created; (or it was created on their servers and sent to your device.)
One would just assume the encryption key is made on your device and never sent to Meta and all the E2EE messages aren't kept on Meta's server after they are sent.
Again, Meta is a company that is profiting on targeted advetising and selling user data, how would whatsapp be a free service without any profit?
Also, Here's someone who saw their whatsapp chat used for targeted ads on them in case you have doubt.
His NAME is MARLINSPIKE?? Like the ancestral home of Captain Haddock from Tintin?! We really are living in a simulation
It's also the name of a tool for working with braided rope.
Where I am, Telegram is mainly used by alt- und far right figures close to Russia. Facts don't matter in these circles any more. Feelings do. And Durov knows how to manage those.
I don't think, at this point, people who use Telegram do it for their privacy. I still use it, but I don't trust it one bit more than I trust WhatsApp.
Isn't Telegram is a Social Media?
They've done a really amazing job of convincing the world that this is an encrypted messaging app.
This is a play on people's naivety. It is an encrypted messaging app in as much as regular messages are encrypted between the client and the server. It's just that this achieves nothing for the user in terms of privacy unless you can both completely trust the provider (you shouldn't) and be confident that the back-end can't be compromised (you can't).
They do also have "secret chats" that are apparently E2E encrypted, but you'd be mad at this point to give them the benefit of the doubt without at least looking at independent security audits of the client.
Why are they sitting in a sauna?
I stopped using Telegram as soon as I learned their chats aren't E2E encrypted unless you create a secret chat. Their advertising is so misleading. Even WhatsApp is more private than Telegram.
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