[lucb1e]

> not really secure

Depends on your standards and your use-case. If you message from your phone most of the time, you can open an encrypted chat[1] with someone and it's properly encrypted.

If you use desktop too a lot, then this doesn't work because the desktop client doesn't support end to end encryption. In that case, you're at the mercy of them not reading your messages. Pretty much the same as with WhatsApp (closed source), Facebook messages, and virtually every other chat application out there.

(Except Wire.com, by the way: they're really cool but nobody uses it, so no network effect there unfortunately. I wish I had a good reason to get people off of Telegram except for "maybe some sysadmin is laughing at your jokes too".)

[1] the application calls it a "secret chat", and recommends people not to use the terminology encrypted chat "because all their chats are encrypted" (yeah just like https: until they're in your datacenter, no matter what they claim). So I'll use the proper term instead of the marketing term: encrypted chat.