What are the reasons to use Signal over Telegram

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Greetings!

A friend of mine wants to be more secure and private in light of recent events in the USA.

They originally told me they were going to use telegram, in which I explained how Telegram is considered compromised, and Signal is far more secure to use.

But they want more detailed explanations then what I provided verbally.
Please help me explain things better to them!

I am going to forward this thread to them, so they can see all your responses!
And if you can, please cite!

Thank you!

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In my view, by far the biggest reason to switch is that Telegram doesn't end-to-end encrypt chats by default.

Yes you can start encrypted chats specifically, but i'll bet 99% of chats on telegram aren't encrypted - meaning whoever has access to the telegram servers can read all the messages.

Signal claims to end-to-end encrypt all chats by default, and if you want to be 100% sure you can in theory read the source code and compile the app yourself. this means signal cannot read any of your messages, even if police asks them to or servers get seized. That's a massive advantage in privacy.

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Telegram doesn't even encrypt group chats. And it doesn't encrypt private convos by default.

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Additionally, E2E chats don't sync between devices (and iirc you can't use them on desktop at all), and group chats can't be encrypted at all.

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Signal very recently made syncing between devices possible:

https://signal.org/blog/a-synchronized-start-for-linked-devices/

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I was talking about Telegram. Syncing messages between devices has always been possible on Signal, just not the ones from before you connected the extra device.

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I can't speak about telegram, but signal is absolutely not secure to use. Its a US-based service (that must adhere to NSLs), and requires phone numbers (meaning your real identity in the US).

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Thank you for your post!

I want you to know your effort and knowledge is appreciated, this will help future readers make better decisions.

But the situation stands that my friend and their friends are not as technologically literate as we are, and I would rather have them on something east and secured than unsecured at all, especially from my experience with getting communities to use such decentralized platforms you mentioned.

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Matrix is no more difficult to sign up on than signal, and they don't forward your information to the US government.

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Breaking news hahaha

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SimpleX is taking a lot of venture capital money which makes it just slightly suspect, imho. Those guys usually want a return of some kind on their investment. I simply don't trust the motives of technocrats like Jack Dorsey.

The Matrix Foundation, on the other hand, seems a lot more democratic in governance and stewardship of the protocol.

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I am not uneducated in this matter, I run Matrix instances and have dabbled in development of tools around it.

Perhaps our experience is different, but I have had great difficulty in helping groups on the ground to use Matrix.

Regardless of our agreement that Matrix is better than Signal, it should not cloud our judgement in at least reducing the harm that is Telegram.

In the future we can keep joining hands to work towards a better future, but for now I hope you can understand my perspective and choice.

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I'm not an expert but I'll use this analogy.

Signal is you meeting a person who gives you secure devices. This person then can only ever provide the following information to someone else. From Signal website. " the date and time a user registered with Signal and the last date of a user's connectivity to the Signal service." Only your device and your friends device can read the messages. It goes direct from you to them. The only way to read any message is having the device.

Telegram is like you making an agreement with another person. By default messages are encrypted but go to the other person for decryption before going to your friends device. This other person Telegram has and will give messages, serverlogs, dates to legal entities by request. Now there is an option to bypass this person by using "secret chats" . This will make it so the message is directly from your device to their device. Telegram can't read messages but as I understand they can still potentially have metadata, server logs of when messages are sent, how many, what device they are sent from. Bottomline is they have activity logs Signal can only provide the date you signed up and the last time you used the app. Not only that but just being on the Telegram platform which allows bots makes you a target. Bots will contact you like spam. Sending you harmful links, etc.

Almost every security person I've ever read says. "I use Signal". Why wouldn't you go with the service that by default has end to end encryption? Telegram makes it a option you have to select for each person.

These are very basic descriptions. I'm Happy to remove or update if I got anything wrong.

More signal encryption info

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As you say yourself (cryptocraphic nerd here):

Signal’s E2EE protocol means that, most likely, message content between persons is secure.

So a shame there are no free servers, are the server soft not open source, only the signal app itself?

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You don’t have to learn Morse code.

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Good projects require money. And SimpleX is still way better than Signal and Telegram, so imo it's worth supporting and using

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The fact that telegram operates in a country that scores 18/100 on global freedom and 30/100 on internet freedom.

https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-arab-emirates

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While there may be better options out there, from a purely security standpoint.

The real world, with non-tech people needs solutions that are easy, fast and as close to foolproof as possible.

I choose Signal, because my mum, my sisters and brothers (none of which are tech people) can all go to their app stores and install Signal, it works and it is easy. Signal is private BY DEFAULT, I don't have to remind them to turn on security for each chat, there is voice and video chat for individuals and groups, I can use it to send files. It is really good. Secure communication is their primary goal.

I have been using Signal since it was called TextSecure and I only had one contact using it.

Yes it sucked when they dropped SMS support; but these days about 98% of my messaging goes through Signal. Any SMS is usually from my doctor/dentist/bank.

I never really trusted Telegram, too many compromises. Secure communication is not their primary goal.

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All big 3, Signal Telegram SimpleX, are just go to app store install, and send invite to contacts. SimpleX gets framed as technical and dissuades new users from installing, while it's just as easy as the other 2.

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Signal tells me which contacts in my contacts list has Signal. It also alerts me when someone in my contacts installs Signal.

I believe Telegram also does that.

SimpleX does not.

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What are the reasons to use Signal over Telegram