Telegram is seen as one of the most secure messaging services. However, Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike has disputed this opinion.
According to him in a tweet on Twitter, there is no worse choice than Telegram when it comes to data collection and privacy. He also wondered why Telegram could get a reputation as a service with full encryption or encryption.
"It's surprising to me that after all this, almost all media coverage still considers it an encrypted messenger," he tweeted.
"Telegram does have many interesting features, but in terms of privacy and data collection, there is no worse choice," he claims.
Marlinspike explained that Telegram stores user contacts, groups, media and all messages sent or received in plaintext on their servers.
"The app on your phone is just to see what's on their server, where the data actually is. Almost everything you see on the app, Telegram sees it too," he explained.
Indeed, some people do not mind or consider it a problem because they believe in Telegram. But that's not the point because true privacy is that messages should only be read by the sender and recipient.
"The real privacy technology is not trusting other parties with your data. This is about the messages you send should only be read by you and the recipient," he continued.
Signal itself implements such an encryption where the message can only be seen by the sender and receiver. Likewise, WhatsApp applies the Signal protocol. Even Marlinspike's message was retweeted by WhatsApp boss Will Catchcart.
Indeed, even though Telegram uses client-to-server encryption, conversations in it are not protected by end-to-end encryption by default. This means that technically anyone who can access the Telegram server can read user conversations.