this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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Privacy
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Except for "secret chat" (which are only 1-on-1 chats, have flaky client support, and require both participants to be online at the same time to initiate; in other words, they are near useless) - this is just simple at-rest storage encryption. They possess the keys to decrypt your messages (again, except for secret chats), because that is necessarily what happens when they serve those messages to recepients.
I am not defending Telegram in any way by saying this, but how can you be so certain that content supposely encrypted with MTProto when using Cloud Chat is only stored in plaintext on encrypted disks? Where is the proof of this?
No one can't prove that Telegram use MTProto to encrypt content sent using Cloud Chat, stores them encrypted, and them decrypt them upon opening because the source code for MTProto is closed. So how can you prove that what you're saying is the way they use?
Don't get me wrong in any of this discussion. I don't trust Telegram anymore. I don't trust any closed sourced softwares anymore! But one can't say "it is like this, not like that" without any proof.