The truth is: There will always be loopholes for governments, nation-state bad actors or individual hackers to snoop on you. 'This provides huge social network information for them that can either be attacked on their servers or can be possibly sold to different authorities without users' consent,' the researchers added. Telegram initially asks for the contact list from the phone/desktop and stores them in their servers. 'This means that if an adversary is able to gain control of their server system, they will have access to (at least) unencrypted messages and definitely to all the metadata,' wrote MIT researchers Hayk Saribekyan and Akaki Margvelashvili. Telegram follows a conventional approach of using a Cloud storage for its data. Telegram uses its own proprietary messaging protocol called 'MTProto', which lacks scrutiny from outside cryptographers. But even that does not ensure a safety net.Ī recent research paper from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) listed striking flaws in Telegram - founded in 2013 by brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov. Instead, you have to select the 'Secret Chat' feature for an extra layer of security. Unlike WhatsApp and Apple iMessage, Telegram conversations aren't encrypted end-to-end by default. Both Telegram and Signal record a spike in users whenever there is a security breach or global outage with WhatsApp. Russia-headquartered Telegram has 200 million users globally, while Signal has more than 10 million (according to Google Play Store downloads). Now, you are looking to take shelter in other so-called secure chat apps.įacebook-owned WhatsApp is the leader among chat apps having 1.5 billion global users with 400 million of them in India. When you joined WhatsApp, end-to-end encryption was there and yet, a third-party spyware, Pegasus, found a backdoor entry to snoop on you. Take this seriously: Encryption is fundamentally flawed and once hackers get to know any vulnerability or bug in the app security ecosystem, including the mobile operating system, your personal data is at their mercy. Some of you may even be attempting to join the chat app Signal for that elusive security that, unfortunately, was never there in the first place.

New Delhi, November 10 (IANS) So you have decided to open a Telegram account in the wake of the WhatsApp-NSO group spyware incident that affected 1,400 select users globally, including some in India.

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