OK, real talk.
Telegram makes big proclamations about privacy, but their promises are mostly marketing.
The app collects a huge amount of data. And like all Big Tech, when pressed by governments, they ultimately comply.
This is why Signal goes to great lengths to NOT collect any data about you -- something that is ironically more expensive and more complex.
We do it because it's the only way to ensure we keep our privacy commitments to the people who rely on us.♥️
- We can't vouch for 3rd party apps, which could put people at risk if they're malicious. So we don't allow them.
- Our code is open source, our cryptographic protocols are documented and our implementations are open source. We only ship Signal as the Signal binaries, but you don't have to "trust" them you can verify
- You do need to register with a phone number, which enables contact discovery and prevents spam. Both are existentially important. However, we're working on usernames.
Meredith Whittaker
Sieva 🚴🚇🏙️🌹