Please stop advocating for Telegram:

https://gizmodo.com/why-you-should-stop-using-telegram-right...

https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/987372998935105539

Signal is definitely the more secure choice, but Whatsapp is still king of the network effect at least in my neck of the woods.

You can pry Telegram from my cold, dead hands. Open source clients with cloud sync of messages plus the option of moving to encrypted end-to-end as needed is the perfect compromise.

My one wish is for the server codebase to be open sourced but given that Telegram is in the midst of a backend architectural change to the Telegram Open Network, I forgive them this, for now.

Every alternative is riddled with issues: WhatsApp is controlled by Facebook who let's face it may as well be the face of evil for Silicon Valley today; Signal is controlled by a power-tripping maniac who refuses to work with the open source commons on releasing to package repos like F-Droid, the app itself also has major deliverability issues; Wire would be good if they just sorted their notifications on mobile out but I've been waiting for that day for a few years now; Matrix is slow to deliver messages among networks larger than a handful.

There's your overview.

Yes, Signal is probably the more secure choice.

That said, I use it a lot less now that I know that it is neither self-hostable, nor really open to third-party clients.

I would like to get rid of Android at some point, and I am tired of relying on third parties not to discontinue their products.

Nowadays, I use Matrix. There are a few downsides (the python server implementation makes the biggest public server quite slow, E2E isn't turned on by default yer -- though it should be at some point, and the clients' UX is generally rough around the edges).

And yeah, whatsapp is king of the network effect, though messenger would take the crown in my circles. That said, by deliberately staying out of these services, and providing my reasons, people ask me for alternatives they could use.

One thing that I like about Matrix is its compatibility with multiple bridges, which lets me connect with people on networks such as IRC, Discord, Telegram, etc. (depending on bridge availability). There is no public whatsapp bridge due to their TOS, and I haven't decided to give them my social graph just yet (though they probably have it already, thanks to having access to my friends'address books). I'd really like to see an officially-endorsed Matrix bridge.

If people really want to contact me, they can still phone me, write me an SMS, e-mail or a letter. Many still bother, but I get it's a tough call for simple acquaintances.

I still feel it's worth it holding to your principles. That's what they are for, and small numbers make the big numbers in the long run.

Update 8/31/2019: After publication of this article Telegram’s creators implemented several changes that are recognized by qualified cryptographers as a vast improvement to its encryption scheme. Since 2017, for example, the MTProto protocol has been recognized as IND-CCA secure.

Its still not actually on by default and you can't use encrypted chat synced between your desktop and phone. Group chats also don't have encryption and (last I checked) count be run e2e encrypted.

Probably 99%+ of conversation on Telegram are visible to the Telegram company.

Please stop advocating for Signal:

https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

Signal is just as non-free as WhatsApp.

What's wrong with that comment? They're under no obligation to support forks of their product.

Could you elaborate on why you single out Telegram as a privacy deal-breaker as opposed to other similar apps?

If they all are just as bad, is there something coming up on the near horizon thats worth the wait?

They are replying to a comment about Telegram, and mention other messaging apps which are better. They also do not say that they're all just as bad, unclear where you got that from?

That Gizmodo article is 3 years old, is it still true?

The tptacek tweet is not, and yes.

Signal requires a phone number as well as Telegram.

Yeah, Signal or Telegram might be a much better balance. But I don't want to be a salesman and try and push the technically superior choice on my friends and family. If I did, though, I would probably push one of those.

I don't like suggesting Telegram because it is not end-to-end encrypted.

I prefer WhatsApp (where it's Facebook that has access to all the metadata like who speaks to whom, but not the message contents), or Signal (which is also end-to-end encrypted and doesn't have the "Facebook" problem).

Note that even though I advocate for WhatsApp I recognize that it's not really what I would call "end to end encrypted". Any time that you allow a broker to execute the initial key exchange, you're implicitly trusting the broker. And beyond that: if you let the broker re-exchange keys without even informing you (!!!) then it's a stretch to call it "end to end encrypted." But if the system re-transmits old messages encrypted with the new keys without user interaction then "end to end encrypted" has lost all meaning whatsoever.

You can opt-in to at least be informed of new key exchanges, so at least I can tell myself that I took some precautions. But if I'm honest I know that it's not very effective.

You refute your main point in your second paragraph - they do inform you of key changes

It's a subtle point, but I would describe "end to end" as covering the humans on both ends. Your WhatsApp client on your phone participates in the key regeneration and/or key update without user interaction. WhatsApp's default UI configuration doesn't notify anyone about key changes. Defaults matter, defaults for secure software matters extra. Nearly no one enables this notification feature.

And even if they did, the client helpfully sent old messages encrypted with the new key. Even when you are notified, you're notified after the fact.

What do you mean regarding old messages? I thought whatsapp didn’t store any old messages and chat history only existed on your device?

It does only exist on your device. Sadly, the WhatsApp client will receive a message from WhatsApp backend: "Fred Smith got a new phone and you should trust this new public key from Fred because I say so. Fred would love to have all the context so please re-send the old messages but encrypted with this new key." The WhatsApp client helpfully complies and hopes that Fred really did get a new phone and it's not Eve who somehow tricked WhatsApp into believing she was Fred. Or maybe WhatsApp was compelled by a lawful order to make it look as if Fred got a new phone.

The WhatsApp client never requests or even informs the user that this event took place. Though it is possible to change the config opt-in to get informed whether this occurred, it is not possible to deny the request for old messages.