Is Telegram Safer Than WhatsApp Or Signal? App Might Not Be So Private After All: Report

Telegram founder and billionaire Pavel Durov is currently being held by French authorities and could face up to 12 serious charges.

His arrest on Sunday has once again put the legality and safety of Telegram in the spotlight. The messaging app — which boasts more than 950 million monthly active users — was an early proponent of end-to-end messaging. It was quickly adopted as the preferred method of digital communication for members of groups looking for secrecy.

But it might not be more secure than competitors such as WhatsApp or Signal.

Telegram, investigators say, is a go-to platform for criminal organizations to communicate. They allege Durov didn’t do enough to curb illicit activity (i.e., child pornography, drug sales, fraud).

Telegram is also used by Ukrainian authorities, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to release information about the war with Russia. It has also become the preferred platform for Russian citizens to obtain information about the conflict in a way that is not supervised by the Kremlin.

The app was reportedly used to organize the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol, and is a key method of communication for Palestinian extremist group Hamas, NPR has reported.

Telegram owes a part of its popularity to the public outrage that grew toward major tech companies. Meta Platforms Inc META, for example, faced lawsuits over the way it handled user data (the company owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp).

Also read: Here’s How Meta Thwarted Iranian Hackers’ Attempt To Target Trump And Biden

Telegram, which reportedly gained as many as 70 million new users in one day, often touts its commitment to privacy.

"We don’t use your data to show you ads," the company claims in its privacy policy.

For users looking for extra privacy, this feature would superficially place it above WhatsApp, an app that also offers end-to-end encryption, but shares user data with other Meta companies including Facebook and Instagram, as per the company.

Meta uses this information for creating user-targeted ad campaigns, among other uses.

While end-to-end encryption means WhatsApp does not have access to the content of messages, a TechRound report explains that the app saves user metadata, which includes "network, browser, ISP, and other identifiers linked to Meta products like Instagram and Facebook."

These data points can be used to find out a user's physical location and WhatsApp is obliged by law to share this information with authorities if requested.

Telegram also saves metadata, and the company states that if collected, it will be erased after a maximum of 12 months. By 2022, Telegram's privacy policy stated that it had never shared any user information with the authorities, Restore Privacy has reported.

Yet a report by German newspaper Die Spiegel said the opposite, reporting that the company "released user data to the Federal Criminal Police Office in several cases."

According to a Wired report, Telegram's encryption technology is not necessarily better than that of WhatsApp or Signal, an open-source, non-profit app that also offers end-to-end encryption.

What can make Telegram less safe than WhatsApp is that the app saves all messages in its own cloud by default. According to Forbes, this means that the encryption it offers is not end-to-end. Users must choose that option, dubbed "secret chat." Messages are by default encrypted between a user's phone and Telegram's cloud and Telegram is able to decrypt those messages.

An independent analysis by cybersecurity blogger Dhiraj found that even "secret chats" may not be safe. That’s because Telegram doesn’t erase files sent in "self-destruct." 

Is Telegram Better For Large Groups?

Within this larger platform ecosystem, Meta has pushed WhatsApp as a private messaging app. It leavs broader social media capabilities to its sister platforms.

Telegram is primarily a private messaging software. Being a standalone platform, it offers certain social media capabilities. Group chats can contain up to 200,000 people.

For WhatsApp, this number of people allowed in groups is limited to just 1,024 people, according to the company.

Telegram allows users to join groups with a pseudonym, without making their phone number visible. This grants some kind of anonymity to users. Members of the group cannot see the phone numbers associated with user accounts.

Another feature, called "channels" allows the creation of one-way distribution channels with an unlimited number of subscribers. Allowing large-scale groups has raised Telegram's reputation as a source of fake news or otherwise unchecked information.

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