American cryptographer and Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike said that Telegram does not meet the concept of a private messenger and may mislead users about the real level of protection of correspondence.
American cryptographer and Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike said that Telegram does not meet the concept of a private messenger and may mislead users about the real level of protection of correspondence.
According to Cybernews, Marlinspike made these statements in an interview with digital philosopher Sabrina Halper amid reports of partial restrictions on Telegram’s work in Russia and Pavel Durov’s regular public statements about the platform’s freedom and privacy. The Signal developer insists: Telegram is a cloud service where the message history is stored on the company’s servers, so the platform itself technically has access to the content of the correspondence.
He also drew attention to the widespread perception that Telegram uses end-to-end encryption by default. The article notes that end-to-end encryption in Telegram is only available in Secret Chats mode and must be enabled manually, while regular chats work differently. Marlinspike compared this approach to a situation where the service looks like a messenger for private conversations, but actually behaves like a centralized «cloud» for messages.
He also explained the difference between Telegram and Signal in the context of law enforcement requests. Marlinspike mentioned Durov’s detention in France in 2024 and emphasized that the ability to respond to legal requests usually means having access to data. Signal, he said, is built to not have that access.
Signal President Meredith Whittaker has previously disputed the «privacy» thesis of Telegram on the X social network, pointing to data collection and lack of encryption by default. Against the backdrop of state pressure on popular platforms and the promotion of controlled alternatives like MAX, the debate about real guarantees of privacy of messengers is only intensifying.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how Roskomnadzor began a partial restriction of Telegram in the territory of the Russian Federation on February 10, 2026. The founder of the messenger, Pavel Durov, recalled Iran’s unsuccessful attempts to force people to use the state analogue.
