As telegram puts it, Telegram is a cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app with a focus on security and speed.
So how is sending a message via Telegram more secure than the regular SMS, WhatsApp messenger, Skype, SnapChat, WeChat, etc? Is Telegram really more secure than all the other apps or does it only claim itself to be focused on security like any other app, but may or may not be the most secure messaging app at all!
This post is inspired by the recent and concerning news that Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov has been arrested by French authorities for its failure to sufficiently moderate content. Whether free speech should be absolute or whether it should be moderated, is a completely different debate, which is not what we are going to get into in this post. However, the one known fact is the vast userbase and influence of Telegram app in both, Russia and Ukraine and the knowledge of how much the Russian Army uses Telegram for their communication, which has reportedly caused panic on pro-war Russian Telegram channels.
Today, while everyone knows and understands the risks of transmitting anything online and the pros and cons of using a social media website or app, yet everyone wants security and privacy in the messages that they exchange and that is where all the messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp have kept differring as well as promoting. And what they have promoted the most, is end-to-end encryptioin.
So what does end-to-end encryption really mean?
End-to-End Encryption is a security measure that ensures that only the intended recipients can read the data sent. This means that even if a message is intercepted while in transit, it remains encrypted and cannot be accessed by unauthorized parties.
Both WhatsApp and Telegram implement end-to-End encryption for their messaging services. This means that your conversations with friends and family are protected from being intercepted and read by third parties. Even WhatsApp and Telegram themselves also cannot un-encrypt the messages you send!
The difference, WhatsApp messages are temporarily stored on their servers, in encrypted format, till then get delivered to the one intended to, and then deleted from the servers.
Telegram, if their Secret Chats option is enabled (and it needs to be enabled on a per chat basis), delivers the message directly to the intended device, without storing it on the servers, even momentarily.
Their Secret Chats feature along with the fact that the Telegram code is an open-source code, makes it feel more secure than WhatsApp.
Now that we know all about end-to-end encrytion, should there really be any reason to panic?
Pavel Durov’s arrest has already been condemned by many big personalities across the world including tech industrialists like Elon Musk and Edward Snowden.
To be fair, we can conclude, that if one has used any of the end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, it is impossible to un-encrypt them and read the content of the message. One exception although being, that the meta-data linked to the message (the data that contains the sender and reciever number and username along with other technical details like time and IP address) are still in unencrupted format.
Secondly, the only gain that France could have would be pressurizing CEO’s like Mark Zuckerberg and Pavel Durov to discontinue the end-to-end encryption technology of their apps so that the censor agencies could monitor and flag such content and take the sender to the court. Yet, that is only possible, in case the CEOs budge to the pressure, for any future messages sent/recieved and not for the messages already sent over the platforms.
Prasanthi
Well analysed th scenario of encryption how every issue is politically routed