And Telegram most certainly cannot encrypt group chat.
The remaining criticism now is that the default for one-on-one chats is still the more convenient normal point-to-point-encrypted chat type instead of E2E-encrypted (which, in Telegrams implementation is less convenient since it doesn't sync between clients, which again is reasonably for those messages where one really cares about secrecy in the context of day-to-day messaging apps).
As usual: I only observe this from the outside. For what I know maybe Putin reads my messages before he goes to bed every night to fall asleep because I mostly use ordinary point-to-point encrypted messages which can be intercepted if Telegram is a secret FSB front or if Telegram isn't careful. Note however that for all we know maybe Biden reads my mail too to fall asleep since that too isn't end-to-end encrypted.
I only comment on observable facts or statements that haven't been debunked. The last means I haven't verified the crypto of any app, I take it for granted that if it is broken someone will figure out just like when WhatsApp sent plaintext messages over port 443, and even faster with Telegram since there are so many who wants to find flaws in it.
If you have and you have real proofs, bring them and I'll probably repent.
In light of that hypothetical but far-fetched pathway, there is probably no need for you to repent there.
With WhatsApp the claim was that if someone snuck a backdoor into it there are enough people watching it to make sure that it would be found out soon.
My point is that even more people are sceptical to Telegram and even dislike it strongly so there should be even better chances of someone discovering if something was broken.
I'm honestly interested.
I only intend to defend Telegram against lies (most of the time the claim that "it is not encrypted"), not to cover up any actual problems so if you comment on it or write a post about it I will read it and probably will upvote it.
Telegram is not unencrypted. This is a lie spread by certain WhatsApp and Signal fanboys (not all, count me in with the Signal fans - I just happen to be a reasonable one that to some degree know what I'm talking about) with the excuse that "of course we mean end-to-end-encrypted when we say encrypted".
What we see now is the resulting confusion: why don't law enforcement have access to it if it virtually unencrypted? Well, the answer is despite all claims of how lousy the encryption is for some weird reason[1] it doesn't seem to leak data.
Now that we have seen the confusion that stems from saying "encrypted means end-to-end-encrypted when we say it does", can we stop repeating that nonsense?
Also, can we think twice before mindlessly repeating such stuff in the future even if it was originally said by some extremely smart people that are well respected for good reasons?
Because those very smart people were the same who recommended WhatsApp for a long time until it became painfully clear to everyone that:
- WhatsApp leaks metadata to Facebook which cooperates happily with basically any government as far as I understand
- WhatsApp has uploaded unencrypted backups to Google Cloud (yes, probably over https, but Google got all you messages and it was known that they would datamine it.)
- and more¨
PS: Some time around half a year before Telegram launched WhatsApp actually sent data unencrypted, i.e. as plaintext. And they sent it over port 443..!
PPS: Stay safe folks, opsec is probably more important than the exact messenger you use. My bets today are Signal in the short run and Matrix as soon as possible, but personally I send photos to my parents using Telegram and receive a lot more info back from various groups.
[1]: Meaning either this is a bigger honeypot than An0m and everyone Three Letter Agency including both FSB and NSA are in on it or Telegram actually got something right. Or they have just been extremely lucky for 9 years in a row or something.