Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France on suspicion of facilitating illegal trafficking, failing to submit documents to authorities, conspiracy to possess child sexual abuse material and distribute CSAM, conspiracy to distribute narcotics, organized fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
This has understandably stirred controversy, with many calling it politically motivated, an attack on free speech, and, oddly enough, an attack on encrypted messages. I don't want to get into political assassinations or free speech, but I will say one thing: Telegram has not always been encrypted, so the encryption argument is not really valid.
People didn't realize that all Telegram group messages were sent in plaintext through Telegram servers, and many of them are stored there, and the French government has ample evidence there that they will review.
The only way to use encryption on Telegram is to have a one-on-one messaging session with someone and enable the “Secret Chat” setting, otherwise it won't be encrypted.
It's good that people are starting to realize that group chats are widely public. It also brings up a few other points to consider: Do you really care about encrypted messaging? If so, what app does encryption better than Telegram?
The first question is one that only you can answer, but I can answer it. my A: Yes, I do. I don't worry about someone finding out that I texted my wife to pick up a bottle of orange juice when she was out shopping, and I don't worry about someone seeing me sending my grandkids goofy pictures of Snoopy on a jet ski. I just don't want them to know unless I tell them.
You're probably the same. Most of the stuff we send on messaging apps is something we don't care about. But that's not always the case. There's a lot of stuff we don't want to share with the world, and you probably know which ones apply to you. One way to protect your privacy is to only use messaging apps that are end-to-end encrypted, meaning only the intended recipient can decrypt and read it.
The easiest thing to talk about is which apps are encrypted. Let's start with the big one: SMS and iMessage. SMS (text messages) are not encrypted. Never. Apple's iMessages are only encrypted if everyone in a messaging group is using a supported Apple device. That may change in a future iMessage update that supports RCS, depending on how Apple uses the RCS profile (RCS is encrypted thanks to Google, and requires both companies to work together). We'll find out soon.
That leaves two very good messaging apps that are thankfully encrypted no matter what brand of phone you're using or how many people are in your group: Signal and WhatsApp. Both apps support end-to-end encryption for one-to-one chats and group messaging by default, and both work on all modern smartphones. You'll need to install the app, of course, but nothing else.
There may be other apps that use encryption properly, but we can be sure about these two.
Two other apps worth mentioning are Facebook Messenger and Google Messages, both of which may or may not be encrypted.
Google Messages is similar to Apple's iMessage: it works if everyone in the chat is using Google's encrypted RCS, otherwise it defaults to regular MMS groups, which are unencrypted.
Facebook Messenger is a bit odd: As long as you're using the Meta app, or a computer with the Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge browser, your chats are encrypted — if you're using Safari or Opera, for example, the encryption is broken.
It’s also important to keep in mind that social media DMs on services like X and Instagram are not encrypted.
Only you can decide if this is important to you, but you should at least be aware of a little bit about what is and isn't encrypted, just in case.