Telegram is banned in Russia and this new ICQ is being launched by a russian company with strong ties to the russian government, so it could be their attempt at replacing somewhat private telegram with something they can openly monitor

They already tried that with TamTam (https://tamtam.chat/) which is also owned by Mail.ru Group. I don't know anyone who uses it though and ICQ had a huge userbase in early 2000's in Russia, so maybe that's the reason?

None of us used official client. Only reason it was popular is because protocol was reverse engineered and there were clients for everyone. This is just capitalizing on ICQ name that many of russians feel nostalgic about.

I still remember my 7 digit invisible vanity number.

I think the point is that people still remember the ICQ brand. Whether they did or did not use the actual ICQ client 15 years ago is less important.

Sounds like Russia is trying to take a page out of China's playbook with TikTok

Just to make it clear, telegram also tied to the russian government, and they developed telegram based on the message protocol from website vk.com which also owned by mail group.

Its just propaganda move to ban Telegram to make it look independent

What are their strong ties to the russian government?

Mail.ru Group is controlled by Alisher Usmanov, an oligarch from the 90s and an old friend of Putin. Few years back Mail.ru group with the help of russian secret services staged a hostile takeover of VK, biggest social network in russia, essentially forcing the founder to leave the country. Since then VK data has been freely available to any russian enforcement agency, or even anyone pretending to be one. In russia there isn't even a pretense of privacy/independence from them, everyone knows FSB&Friends have unrestricted access to their stuff

Except Telegram also lacks the most important feature, ubiquitous E2EE. Russian state employs a lot of hackers and you're really fooling yourself if you think Pavel Durov can harden his infrastructure to protect from an entire state sponsored cyber army with its zero days. When they hack Telegram's servers, all messages are bound to leak.

*nearly all messages

(not the E2E ones)

And those messages are the ones that reveal your intention to hide messages. That metadata is some of the most valuable.

Also, people don't really want to use secret chats because they aren't cross platform. Sure, some people only own phones, but those that switch to laptop/desktop computer don't want to whip out phone hundreds of times a day, but opt-in for the insecure cloud chats that are accessible with simple alt+tab.

So yeah. Sure, secret chats can be mostly secure, the problem is the E2EE isn't practical to any reasonable extent and again, using it leaks metadata.

Isn't Telegram the one with half-baked encryption that's not even used in group chats?

No, your statement is misleading. If you are in good faith you can have a look at their FAQ, and the blog of Pavel Durov:

* https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-secure-is-telegram

* https://telegra.ph/Why-Isnt-Telegram-End-to-End-Encrypted-by...

* https://telegra.ph/Why-you-should-stop-reading-Gizmodo-right...

Almost nobody I know uses encrypted chat in Telegram because it has such terrible UX. I don't have a single encrypted convo either because when we try, we always go back to our unencrypted one.

For a good UX impl, check out Keybase. It's encrypted chat feels just as good as Telegram's unencrypted chat.

Chief, shouldn’t we be using the Cone of Silence for this?

https://youtu.be/vsNR9FnxOdY

I didn't know what to expect, but accurate depiction.

"GPG isn't that hard! You see, you just..."

Good thing that keybase is absolutely not like that then

Yes, that's what I had said in my comment.

The FAQ item you mentioned is in direct contradiction with cybersecurity experts who have been saying for years that WhatsApp is more secure than Telegram.

This debate has taken place over and over again on HN, there's nothing new here.

Well, now about a half of decade passed since that expert opinions were raised. And no data-breaching bugs were found in Telegram, but there were plenty of them in WhatApp.

Surely, that doesn't mean that expert were wrong, but at least mentioning that in Telegram vs WhatsApp debate doesn't look like a strong point.

Its funny and sad that telegram developers at the same time dismiss their own past history of security vulnerabilities with "all programs have bugs", but then they attack an app with superior encryption protocol by complaining about those same bugs that get patched when they are found. Pathetic.

And like heinrich5991 said, there's no need for backdoor or vulnerability when the data leaks by design to the server.

And no secret chats aren't an option. E2EE needs to be cross-platform and enabled by default. Signal can do it, Wire can do it. Telegram can't, because the developers are completely incompetent.

The WhatsApp data breaches disclosed data that is available to Telegram by design, right now.

Pointing to Telegram's own claims to say that they are secure seems strange. I tried reading anyway. When it started claiming that Signal didn't allow for backups I gave up.

This is misleading propaganda that ignores proper cryptographic design. It relies strongly on whataboutism and dismisses properly designed protocols as niche without really arguing from any other viewpoint as appeal to popularity. Furthermore, Durov employs backwards logic, circular reasoning, and double standards. There's no room for good faith when Durov intentionally ignores concerns of the entire infosec community. When Bruce Schneier and Matt Green tell people to avoid your product, that's when you look in the mirror and ask "what am I doing with my life".

The encryption works as designed so Telegram and governments can see whatever they want.