[w3rhn2j34oh5o]

Granted, there are no known weaknesses with their protocol -- however, Telegram leads the user to believe their conversations are encrypted, which, unless they opted in to secret chats (and this is not supported on desktop ), its all in the clear.

So if you are using it on desktop, all your messages belong to Telegram, and whomever they are sharing it with.

[eitland]

As has been pointed out before this should be plain wrong. Keys and messages are kept separate, in separate jurisdictions even.

This way Telegram can back up messages without dumping them to Googles servers like WhatsApp does by default.