“Why Using WhatsApp Is Dangerous“
WhatsApp is bad, but Telegram isn't great either. All chats that you haven't explicitly made "secret" are not end-to-end encrypted. They're apparently "encrypted", but the keys are controlled by Telegram.<p>Furthermore, they frequently "ban" channels that they deem contain  "inappropriate" or "adult" content. Clearly they're reviewed by either humans or AI of some sort. So... that makes me uncomfortable.<p>Their reason for why you can trust them with encryption keys was "we didn't hand them over to <insert country here> and so they banned us where we could have cooperated and continued to have operating in said country", which seems like a pretty weak argument.<p>For truly decentralised, private and encrypted communication, I <i>highly</i> recommend matrix+riot.im.<p>EDIT:<p>> To support this idea, Pavel Durov claims that Telegram is banned in Russia and Iran, where both governments asked him for encryption keys to access the platform’s messages. Hence for refusing the proposal given by the governments of those countries, the app was banned.<p>From <a href="https://outline.com/BK8f7h" rel="nofollow">https://outline.com/BK8f7h</a><p>Even if telegram hasn't handed over keys so far, the fact remains that the keys are still controlled by them and tomorrow if they wished they could read/expose/publish/share all "private" communication.<p>Think of it this way. If Bezos had been using telegram like is recommended in the article and the CEO of telegram wanted to spy on Bezos' chats, he would have totally been able to.<p>They say that chats don't have e2e by default so that they can be backed up to the cloud [0], but there's no reason why you can't back up encrypted chats and ask the user for a pin and decrypt them on-device.<p>Furthermore, telegram forces you to link your account with a phone number, and that acts as the primary (or only) form of authentication, opening you up to sim-jacking.<p>Also, this means that anyone who has your phone number is told you're on the app and given your username, which you may not want for privacy reasons.<p>[0] <a href="https://telegra.ph/Why-Isnt-Telegram-End-to-End-Encrypted-by-Default-08-14" rel="nofollow">https://telegra.ph/Why-Isnt-Telegram-End-to-End-Encrypted-by...</a>