Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp: Any encrypted correspondent application you must choose

Main points:

cable It is not provided as strong privacy features as a signal, but it has some features that may make the application attractive to some people.

cable It is the service of the correspondence based on the group of the peer, and it stores the data you need to work. Telegram also writes that it collects and stores some of your identification data, such as IP addresses. The company changed its privacy policy in 2024 to say that it will share some of your data with law enforcement if requested.

“We have made it clear that IP addresses and phone numbers for those who violate our rules can be revealed by the relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests,” Pavil DorovTelegram CEO, published in September.

With this change in place, cable The fulfillment of 900 requests to obtain information from the American authorities in 2024, affecting 2,253 people, according to the Telegram report on the transparency.

If Telegram does not deliver your data to law enforcement is worrying, the company has suffered from data violations over the years. This information was placed in the hands of others. in 2020, For example, the Iranian Telegram data leaked about 42 million users of Telegram online. in 2019The telegram defect was exploited by Chinese agencies to expose the identities of the demonstrators in Hong Kong.

If you are still interested in telegram, the main difference between them and other correspondence applications such as Signal is that it can serve as a correspondent for large groups, similar to Discord. It offers public channels that publish news about video, news, sports and more. in Entricherment channelFor example, you can find trailers and posters for new movies and TV programs.

but, Public channels Such is not encrypted from end to end. cable He writes that everything is published in public channels and public groups encrypted in crossing to their servers and in storage, but these public channels are available to everyone on Telegram, there is no required encryption key. So if you are an owner or official of a channel, your posts in this channel are similar to the general registry.

Telegram’s secret chats offer an encoder from run to finish, but there is a warning. These chats are limited to OriginKnown as your phone.

“In this way, you can always be sure that it is safe as long as your phone is safe in your pocket,” he writes Telegram.

However, this also means that you cannot use secret chats on desktop copies or browser from Telegram. So these chats can be intercepted and read by a person who is not intended.

Telegram offers automatic messages deleting, but the smallest time interval you can choose is one day, unlike the signal where you can set messages to delete them after minutes or even seconds. Telegram also provides an interesting self-destruction feature that will delete your account, letters and contacts after a certain amount of inactive time-between a month and 24 months.

TELEGRAM Open Source Customer Apps, such as Signal, and CNET Enditor Moe Long The open source applications can provide transparency and allow people to inspect a code for security gaps. but, Dorov Published in 2021 that the server codes are not open source.

“You don’t even need a symbol on the side of the server to verify the integrity of the secret chats-it is solid, regardless of how the servers work (this is the basic point),” he wrote. cable privacy policy It also states that the cloud servers are encrypted and that “encryption keys in each case are stored in many other data centers in different judicial states”, which means that employees in any one data center do not have information to encrypt data there.

It is not uncommon for you to have a closed servant symbol to protect intellectual property, security or any other means. However, you still put your confidence in the company to protect any data on these servers. A Third party review It can help enhance this confidence by confirming that data centers are working in a way that is intended, even if audits can only pick up this information to get a bit in a timely manner.

Long said that TELEGRAM is from a comprehensive to a tip that somewhat reduces the closed Telegram server icon in Telegram because the messages remain safe until they are decoded on the recipient device. But this may not fully protect your data.

“Even with a comprehensive encryption, some descriptive data can be collected,” said Long.

Although Telegram is free, it provides a paid layer ($ 5 per month or $ 36 a year) to reach more features. Some of these features include unlimited cloud storage, emojis of animation, and there are no advertisements in public telegram channels – yes, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, Ads in public channels with more than 1000 subscribers On a telegram.

The selective encrypted messages of the gram, but the larger range chats make them a good alternative to services such as Discord- which only provide comprehensive encryption Voice and video calls. However, some of your data are still collected when you do not use secret chats, so be careful.

You can download Telegram from Apple App Store or Google Play Free storage.