| > The thing I'm most confused about is why Signal and Telegram are always seen as competing. Well, this is a good question. Telegram is an allround day-to-day messenger with channels, massive groups, broadcasts etc that also works as a login provider while Signal is a research project to create a secure messenger and also something about crypto coins ;-) Yet, while Telegrams encryption scheme has left a lot to be wished for and their communication has been arrogant: - Signal has had more than one really bad security problems like remotely exploitable XSS in desktop app and that rather long time span when Signal sometimes sent images to wrong recipients - Meanwhile Telegram hasn't seen such problems since they were starting out And WhatsApp? Why it is even mentioned in a discussion about secure messaging after all the blunders they've made I don't know: - Sending deliberately unencrypted backups to Google with the intention that Google could datamine them. - Lately there has also been talk about "filtering content on the edges". So much for E2E-encryption when the endpoints report your content through a separate channel. I believe in Signal and E2E-encryption, but, as I have said a number of times and a number of ways before: There is a lot more to security than just cool algorithms and buzzwords. All the E2E-encryption in the world doesn't save you when the service provider gets away with the abuses WhatsApp have been caught red handed with and no algorithm saves you when you can get remotely exploited by receiving a message. Some might think I am extremely pro Telegram. I have one place where I want a lot less of it: It really scares me when I see police use it. For any kind of communication that needs to be super secure: stay far away! |
You mentioned only unencrypted OS backups (which were a major issue, but also industry standard, affecting everything but Signal which takes a severe usability hit over it, and apparently fixed https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/about-end-to-end-encr...). "Filtering content on the edges" is a whole debate but not something that ever materialized.
It sounds there's a list, what are the others?