I thought telegram was flagged as insecure like a decade ago, it's never really been "very secure"

Like any number of articles like this: https://hackernoon.com/7-reason-why-telegram-is-insecure-by-...

▲ lxgr 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It was, but most people will believe what their peers (real or parasocial) say over the collective screams of every security researcher on the planet, so here we are.

▲ misiek08 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Still we are using it, because UX kills any other app and people that are (probably) behind it will cause almost no harm to casual, not-interesting people :)

And yes, I know that by default chats are not E2E, that phone number has way too many effects on accounts etc. Still, UX and agencies interested in important people are more welcome than data selling, ad-based companies.

▲ lxgr 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What a bizarre threat model. Why would you rather have your data with who knows who than just your metadata?

And what UX problems exactly is Telegram solving that its many competitors aren’t? I hear this all the time, but I use both Telegram and WhatsApp and I haven’t found anything lacking in the latter, UX wise.

▲ maxgashkov 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> and I haven’t found anything lacking in the latter, UX wise

I'm sorry if I'll sound condescending, but you probably don't use either frequently enough. With telegram it's the little (and sometimes not so little) things, e.g.:

  - voice message transcription
  - you can select part of the message via long-press and use it as a quote when responding
  - massively more complex formatting possible
  - bots as the first class citizens not gated behind some bullshit 'Business' KYC/subscription
  - is not crippled by prohibiting system-level phonebook access like whatsapp
  - extreme flexibility in managing large groups, mostly due to the bot point above
  - and many more

All of the above does not excuse lack of e2e by default, this is almost embarrassing in 2026 now, but Telegram is the most polished IM experience of all the apps I have tried.

	▲	lxgr an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I use them daily, so we might just have different priorities. Bot access is definitely better in Telegram; that’s what I sometimes use it for. WhatsApp has voice message transcription now, but fortunately I don’t receive many. (I consider it pretty rude to put the effort of messaging on the recipient because the sender can’t be bothered to type or transcribe on their side.) Everything else you mentioned is a minor inconvenience to me. Knowing the provider can’t mine my message data more than makes up for that.

▲ maqp 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"will cause almost no harm to casual, not-interesting people"

Yeah same can be said for Facebook and WhatsApp that Durov vehemently claims should not be trusted with user's data. Maybe it's a ploy for the Mark Zuckerberg of Russia to get the data of people.

Also, Telegram doesn't have to sell it's users if it's an FSB honeypot.

▲

mschuster91 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, it makes sense from a threat modeling perspective. If you're Russian, you should use Whatsapp because it is unlikely Whatsapp will cooperate with the Russian dictatorship, but in Western countries, you can assume that anything from Meta, Google or Apple that's in any way useful (and even if it's just metadata) can and will end up in the data lakes at the NSA.

	▲	tannertech 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Assuming you think Meta can write secure proprietary software and trust them to do so.

▲ g-b-r 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Absolutely, but mostly for their protocols, statements, people and infrastructure.

A file exfiltration vulnerability is still noteworthy.

▲ phoronixrly 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Here's one from Filippo

The Most Backdoor-Looking Bug I’ve Ever Seen - https://words.filippo.io/telegram-ecdh/

▲ TZubiri 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It has this feature where it tells you about other users that are on the platform. I mean it's not a huge leak, but right off the bat it's pretty poor security posture. For an app that competes with other chat apps on supposedly being more secure and privacy aware, it does worse than whatsapp on that end.

	▲	lukan an hour ago \| parent [-]
		"For an app that competes with other chat apps on supposedly being more secure and privacy aware" It mainly competes against facebook and other social media plattforms. The privacy is clearly wrong and only believed by non technical people (which can be amusing, when on TG someone posts a link to FB, or a WhatsApp group and people chime in and lecturing others that they should not use that as it is insecure and owned by a big company who will sell them out).