A lot of privacy guides suggest avoiding Telegram. I understand that in its default mode there’s no E2EE (and no E2EE for groups at all). If people I know don’t wanttko use Signal, isn’t Telegram the lesser evil given it’s nicer privacy policy (than other popular ones)?
Say I use the FOSS version of it.
E2EE is the most important protection for your messages. Otherwise, it means that all of your messages can be accessed just like a word file in their server. It’s up to you
I read long ago of criticisms about encryption algorithm by experts. Instead of using existing standards they baked their own algorithms. They were not recognised cryptograph experts. Afaik, they improved it over time. But there might still be issues.
In sum, trust is not your friend and up to you without E2EE.
Would you rather lose a contact if they insist on a communication channel that’s leaking metadata but the content is e2ee (WhatsApp for example)? (Or perhaps in your view keeping the content secure is more important than anything?)
Asking out of curiosity, I’m aware that every person has their own threat model