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Comment by didibus | Hacker News Reader

Telegram is not a secure chat application though. It's more similar to Facebook Messenger. You're better off using WhatsApp over it if you care about security.

Or obviously Signal.

When it comes to Matrix, it's a little trickier. Riot, the most common Matrix client does E2E encryption on DMs and invite only rooms. What I'm not sure is what happens if you send a private message to someone who is using Matrix client that doesn't do E2E. Will it fail to send? Or will it like fallback to not encrypted?

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> Telegram is not a secure chat application though.

Fun fact: I didn't even write that.

The rest is not so much for you personally as for a number Signal fans:

I get it, I get it: Signal is best. But seriously: do you Signal fans have to derail every conversation?

Do you have to take a jab at every other messenger at every given opportunity?

Or can we agree that there's room for more than one solution? Because physical mail, email, irc, Telegram etc are probably going to stay around for a long time, at least until Signal solves:

- large groups

- backups

- grows a stable messaging API

- creates a Bot api

- and starts teleporting physical goods

- etc

Until Signal solves all this we are going to have to deal with other mesaging solutions.

Deal with it. Seriously.

Yes: Signal is probably the most secure now IMO.

No: talking down other messengers doesn't make it better.

@dang: apologies in advance. I've tried hard to keep it polite.

There is an already ecosystem on Telegram bots, channels and groups that lacks Signal, even if all my contacts move to Signal i would still keep Telegram only for those features and many more.

Exactly my point.

We are going to have to live with various systems for a long time, IMO hopefully "forever" since competition typically often does wonderful things.

> But seriously: do you Signal fans have to derail every conversation?

I don't really have a horse in this race, just a guy who was scrolling through these comments and was struck how rude and ridiculous this remark is.

You're in a discussion thread for an article about Signal. You're the one who brought up Telegram and now you're having a little fit and accusing Signal fans of "derail[ing] every conversation"? This conversation is about Signal. If you didn't want people comparing it to Telegram, why did you bring it up?

> You're in a discussion thread for an article about Signal. You're the one who brought up Telegram

This would be a good point, if it wasn't for the point that the only reason I brought up Telegram was to say I was a Telegram user cheering for the Signal team!

Fair.

> do you Signal fans have to derail every conversation?

I know this happens a lot in other threads about other messengers, so it's probably a fair comment. But I find there is something ironic about someone commenting on a story about Signal that they use Telegram and then complaining that other users talking about Signal are derailing the conversation.

It will be sent encrypted, and the receiver will only be able to view it if they are on an encryption-capable Matrix client.

What happens is that the client which doesn't do E2E can't decrypt the message and shows an error. I use fractal and this is what happens there.

Yes. Telegram is not secure. You are better of using messenger or airsend (https://www.airsend.io/). Here is a detailed post on Telegram security (https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/is-telegram-secure/). E2E encryption is not default it applies to only secure chats.

End to end encryption isn't even in the top 5 when I'm selecting a chat client for general personal use.

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