What has changed in the security of Telegram
WhatsApp’s decision to threaten users who do not accept the new agreement with restrictions on the work of its messenger has given a fairly tangible increase in the Telegram audience. Those who until that moment did not dare to change one service to another suddenly realized that there was no better reason for castling. Still, Telegram is known as the most secure messenger, and its owner is a principled person who trades neither his reputation nor the privacy of his clients. True, there is a point that all Telegram users should know about.
telegram collects a lot of user data. This is evidenced by the content of the privacy label of the messenger in the App Store. Moreover, we are talking about data that is directly related to the personalities of users. That is, there is absolutely no need to talk about the total observance of confidentiality on the part of Telegram.
If you go to the Telegram page in the App Store, you will see what kind of data related to the personalities of users it collects:
- Purchase history
- Travel history (geolocation)
- Contacts (from the address book)
- Identifiers (user IDs)
- User Content (Photo, Video, Audio, Game Content, Email or Text Messages)
- Contact details (name, phone number)
- Payment information (bank card details)
It would seem that it has always been so. But no, since the introduction of privacy shortcuts, Telegram has updated it twice. If earlier he collected only basic contact information, contact lists, and device ID, then after one of the latest updates, the range of data has changed significantly.
To those three types of data were added purchase history, financial information, tracking the exact location of the user, user-generated content, including multimedia data and text messages. That is, Telegram, in fact, took on the right to track its users more carefully, while they themselves believe that they are 100% protected.
Basically, the changes that have been made to Telegram’s privacy label are easily explainable. Just recently, the messenger received a big update with the ability to create store bots, support for popular payment systems, and the basis for turning into an advertising platform. Therefore, Telegram developers could not ignore the requirements of Apple.
Telegram security issues
Does this mean that Telegram is no longer as secure as it used to be? Well, first you need to decide what we mean by security. After all, whatever one may say, but claims to the security of Pavel Durov’s messenger were before:
- First, regular messages (outside of secret chats) are not protected by end-to-end encryption and in theory, they can be intercepted;
- Secondly, it is believed that Pavel Durov has long leaked Telegram encryption keys to the American / Arab / European authorities;
- Thirdly, Telegram stores user correspondence in the cloud and allows you to restore it on a completely new and clean device.
So, if you mean these aspects by protection, then nothing has changed here. With regard to storing and encrypting user correspondence, Telegram has remained the same. What’s more, it doesn’t even use advertising IDs like many other apps. That is, to calculate that you are you, neither he nor anyone else can.
In this sense, there are no complaints about Telegram. If you have used it before and put up with these shortcomings, which can only be called such a stretch, then you can continue to use it further. As for the rest of the data, their collection can be limited. At least in part.
After all, if you do not use bank cards in Telegram, then, accordingly, the messenger will have no place to get your payment information. The same goes for photos, videos and voice messages if you don’t send them. Yes, this will greatly limit your communication, but by and large before, users somehow got along with only text, and nothing, they coped. In short, personally, I do not see any reason to refuse Telegram point-blank.