Signal Founder Details Messaging App's Superiority Over Telegram Amid Ukrainian Crisis; Elon Musk Chimes In With His Preferences

Tesla, Inc.'s TSLA Elon Musk, who is very active on Twitter, has in the past recommended Signal, a privately-held encrypted messaging service, to his Twitter followers. He has reiterated his viewpoint through a tweet on Friday.

What Happened: Telegram came under criticism amid the Ukrainian crisis for being a source of misinformation. Signal's founder Moxie Marlinspike saw an opportunity here and took a dig at Telegram, which is quite popular in Ukraine. "Telegram has a lot of compelling features, but in terms of privacy and data collection, there is no worse choice," Marlinspike said in a tweet.

In a threaded tweet, the Signal founder went on to explain that Telegram stores all contacts, groups, media, and every message sent or received in plaintext on its servers. The app on a user's phone is just a view onto the app's servers, where the data is actually stored, he added.

"Privacy tech is really about making the tech consistent with the UI. But if Telegram's UI were consistent with the way the tech worked, every chat would be a group chat with everyone that works at Telegram + everyone that hacks Telegram + every gov that accesses Telegram, etc," Marlinspike said. He even suggested, if not resorting to hacking, Russia could leverage the safety of families of Telegram employees residing in Russia to gain access to servers.

Explaining the security features of Signal, Marlinspike said all communication in Signal is end-to-end encrypted, and therefore there is no cloud database storing plain text message histories.

Related Link: Telegram Creator Pavel Durov Says His Blockchain Is 'Years Ahead Of Everything Else'

Musk Joins The Conversation: Musk replied that Signal is the least "insecure messaging service." When a question was asked regarding whether he uses any other messaging apps, the Tesla CEO said he uses "iMessage & Signal."

Do you use any other messaging apps

— Tesla Silicon Valley Club (@teslaownersSV) February 25, 2022

Signal Usage Spikes In Ukraine: Data shared by Cloudflare, Inc. NET CEO Matthew Prince showed that Signal usage in Ukraine shot up just after midnight on Feb. 24, when Russia began military operations against its neighbor. "Spike in use of Signal (messaging app) in Ukraine in the last 24 hours. Smaller but significant increase in the use of Telegram as well," he said in a tweet.

Related Link: How To Navigate The Ukraine Crisis-Induced Market Chaos