Telegram’s Pavel Durov is wrong about the signal – and has been for years

Telegram founder Pavel Durov put the encrypted messaging app on fire this month, arguing in a May 8 post that its privacy practices are a “circus trick.” His comments were made on purpose to undermine the rival messaging app, but Durov's history with Signal and Telegram's own privacy credentials make his comments difficult to take seriously.

Durov has been throwing stones at Signal for years. In 2017, he predicted that within five years we would find a backdoor in their protocol. Seven years later, this prediction missed the mark. A few years later, Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike posted a thread suggesting that we should stop calling Telegram an encrypted messaging app.

Signal and Telegram don't like each other.

In the context of the historic beef between the two brands, this latest post sounds more like a gated software than a legitimate PSA on a market competitor.

Evil in messaging apps

Signal was already under intense scrutiny after comments made by Signal Foundation chairwoman Kathryn Maher, who promoted the “free and open” nature of Wikipedia as a “white male Western construct.” It was a story that gained a lot of traction on social media, and drew comments from Jack Dorsey, Vitalik Buterin and Elon Musk on X.

Related: Proton Mail reveals encryption scope that exposes activist data.

When people raised their forks at Maher's politics, it was easy for Durov to turn the angry crowd to Signal himself.

Signal began working to dispel the claims about their app and protocol, with president Meredith Whittaker providing important context in her responses to put some ice on the story.

Things have calmed down for now. However, this beef isn't over — if anything, it's just getting started. This row is Kendrick v. Drake has the potential to become a version of cyber security.

Anti-signal activity

It was easy to bash people about signal frustration. In some circles, Anti-Signal is coming up – a surprising sensitivity of one of the world's most respected messaging apps.

It probably started when former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson appeared on Lex Friedman's podcast earlier this year. Speaking of messaging security, Carlson said, “We all have theories about secure lines of communication. It's as secure as a signal, a telegraph. [sic] No, or WhatsApp, [which] It's owned by Mark Zuckerberg – you won't believe it.

In the same conversation, Carlson said he was able to access messages and signal messages related to the NSA's efforts to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin and his efforts to infiltrate the media. This may have planted the first seed of doubt, and indeed it feels like the starting point for the recent controversy.

Connecting some dots, Carlson sat down for an interview with Pavel Durov in April. A month later, Durov's post revealed that key people on Durov's channel had used their “private” signal messages.

If you're not a natural Sherlock, Carlson Durov is one of those “useful people” you're talking about. Based on these claims, Durov claims that Telegram offers “the only popular means of communication that is private.”

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Telegram has always tried to connect with the encrypted messaging community, but Telegram is not a suitable signal option. Telegram does not have end-to-end encryption by default and does not have end-to-end encrypted group chats. Opting-out privacy features — especially essentials like end-to-end encryption — mean that most users are left unprotected.

But none of this will stop Durov from highlighting people's doubts about Signal to support Telegram. More conflict is bound to happen. (Wouldn't it be nice if we all agreed?)

It is to be remembered that Signal did not support Maher's opinion regarding this round of competition. Their line is that archive politics doesn't matter – you don't need to trust the people running Signal, you just need to trust the code.

It's a fine line to take. With highly audited, open source code, Signal has a relatively trustless model. Maher politics has nothing to do with the PQXDH key exchange. But a decentralized model can be more reliable – and already is.

Anti-signal activity

I am working on a session-to-end encrypted messaging application called Session. It runs on a decentralized network managed by ordinary community members who contribute computing resources to deliver and store messages.

Not only is the client and server code open source, but you can verify that the open source code is running on the network – you can mix and run it yourself. Session does what it says on the box, no trust required.

However, this is not a cure-all. A problem with a decentralized network is that the complex key manipulation embedded in the signaling protocol is difficult to avoid. This flexibility provides unique cryptographic properties, but the updating of key states does not involve a centralized network of community nodes and can be accessed at will.

If you do away with encryption entirely, you can have an amazing UX like Telegram, where messages appear instantly as if they were rabbits out of a hat.

There is always a trade-off. No one has everything – and if you do, they probably have something to sell you.

This article is not intended for general information purposes and should not be construed as legal or investment advice. The views, ideas and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.