The German media Spiegel claims that Telegram is not as secret as it claims.
claims to be a great defender of freedom of expression and does not hesitate to openly criticize whatsapp for its lack of security. The application has also greatly benefited WhatsApp TOS changes at the beginning of 2021. But is the application really the paragon of privacy? Maybe not really.
Telegram, encryption and distributed infrastructure
Unlike WhatsApp and Signal which encrypt all messages end-to-end by default, Telegram only offers this feature for its secret chats. All other exchanges are encrypted between the server and the client, of course, and stored in the cloud in encrypted snippets and archived on different servers, but Telegram can technically have access to this data.
In in the FAQTelegram clarifies that “Telegram can only be compelled to disclose data if the problem is serious and universal enough to be subject to scrutiny by several different legal systems around the world” and “to date, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments ».
Telegram and privacy
According to the German media Spiegel, this last assertion would however no longer be correct in 2022. The newspaper affirms that “Telegram reported user data to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) on several occasions“. The media adds that “it was data from suspects in the fields of child abuse and terrorism” and “in the case of other criminal offences, it remains difficult for German investigators to obtain information from Telegram ».
It is of course difficult to blame Telegram for passing information to the authorities in these two specific cases, but it goes once morest the communication “0 bytes leaked ».
Also according to Spiegel, the German Interior Ministry would have opened direct discussions with Telegram in which Pavel Durov, founder of the company, would have participated personally. The two entities would therefore agree to cooperate, without it being known exactly to what extent.
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