[FDSGSG]

No amount of effort to validate their protocol will make Telegram trustworthy. Telegram does not encrypt most conversations, you cannot compare it to Signal.

In regards to actually validating the protocol, the OP addresses this

>The current consensus seems to be that the latest version is not broken in known ways that are severe or relevant enough to affect end users, assuming the implementation is correct. That is about as safe as leaving exposed wires around your house because they are either not live or placed high enough that no one should touch them.

[wyuenho]

> Telegram does not encrypt most conversations, you cannot compare it to Signal.

I wish people will stop repeating this nonsense. Just because they don't do end to end encryption by default, doesn't mean they don't encrypt, which implies messages are sent in plaintext.

There are plenty of reasons why they did what they did, and these questions are all available publicly in their FAQ or the founder's Telegram channel. Whether you agree with the trade-off or their explanations is up to you, but facts are facts.

[pedrocr]

Do you really consider an "encrypted conversation" if you just do TLS to a central server that has everything in plaintext? Is Facebook Messaging encrypted messaging? Because that's the kind of thing we already had before this wave of apps and Telegram is marketed within this new wave but doesn't have any more security than what the previous wave already had, even if you trust their homegrown protocol.

[reitanqild]

Edit, first things first:

> Is Facebook Messaging encrypted messaging?

Facebook messaging is not "encrypted messaging" AFAIK.

But if you say it sends the messages unencrypted like people claim Telegram does I will probably point out that you are wrong even if I don't like Facebook at all.

end Edit.

--------

Tell me then: If you call point-to-point-encrypted "unencrypted", what do you call the old WhatsApp protocol from before Moxie helped them, which actually sent messages unencrypted? [1]

What do you call the files that Whatsapp store on my phone (messages.db or something) that I can transfer to my computer and open without any tooling besides a zip tool and SQLite?

Unencrypted -- ?

Even more unencrypted?

There is a reason why we keep repeating our plea to differ between unencrypted, point-to-point-encrypted and end-to-end-encrypted and it is not because we adore all of Telegrams decisions, at least not for all of us.

It is because precision often matters in engineering and I think especially for security work.

[1]: Irony over irony, I used to love them back then. I knew fixing the crypto part would be doable and they were such a nice company with such a nice business model which aligned so nicely with our interests as users.

[ryanlol]

> Unencrypted

Yes?

[wyuenho]

Sending plaintext in a secure transport is not what they do either. They do have e2e encrypted secret chat on day one, and the ends are bound to the devices, so even if you login from your desktop app, you won't see the secret chats on your phone, unlike Signal.

Seriously, please educate yourself first.

[pedrocr]

> They do have e2e encrypted secret chat on day one

I was specifically replying to your complaint that non-E2E encrypted chats should not be called unencrypted because they had encryption in transit to the server. You're now shifting the conversation back to the E2E encryption they do have.

[wyuenho]

Non-E2E encrypted chats should not be called unencrypted because they had encryption in transit to the server.

The contradiction is right there in the sentence.

[FDSGSG]

This is stupid pedantry.

[ryanlol]

Yes, they have opt-in e2e secret chats.

Oh, except the Windows and Linux clients don’t even support those.