Over on GitHub there’s an issue about Signal video call quality – Poor video quality – which just turned five years old now. Call quality has not improved. Skype introduced reliable video calls in 2005 and more or less solved video call quality issues by 2008. Telegram video call quality is always HD and almost pristine on exactly the same networks and routes where our call quality is unusable on Signal.
What’s particularly frustrating about the poor video quality in Signal is to hear Moxie attack Telegram for privacy issues. Until Signal video call quality improves, Signal may as well not exist for video calls. The quality is too poor to use. The bad call quality has gone on so long, that it looks like it’s deliberate policy. The poor quality drives callers onto other platforms which are less secure.
Comparing Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp Security
What’s even more astonishing it to hear Western IT specialists who should know better suggest that WhatsApp is more secure than Telegram. Wassim Lalaoui from VLC writes:
Maybe better than Zoom, but clearly not better than WhatsApp. Telegram does not have E2EE for messages by default while on WhatsApp E2EE is mandatory
WhatsApp do claim E2EE security.
The reality is there have always been thousands of contractors who have direct access to WhatsApp data. WhatsApp has never kept their data locked up with user-only E2EE. While the data may be encrypted when it’s at rest, if everyone and their brother in a three-letter agency has the encryption keys, it’s not secure, is it?
Long before this lawsuit, the lack of security and E2EE was clear. Just from the public revelations over the last ten years, it’s been obvious that WhatsApp has always been leaky (many inconvenient European politicians have lost their mandate due to WhatsApp revelations). There are far fewer Telegram leaks.
The unknown if it’s due to Telegram not keeping all the data or just that 1. Telegram security is better, with encryption for most states including rest 2. the Telegram team is smaller and more trustworthy than the 1500+ contractors who had WhatsApp access.
There’s a footrace between Signal and Telegram over security (Signal leaks your connections and your frequency of communication but does not leak the actual content; Telegram has the data but does not leak it by default only under court order) but both are thousands of miles ahead of Zoom and WhatsApp and even Apple who leak all your data all the time as they are US-based and subject to the Patriot Act.
Telegram Security: the French Connection
Since Durov and his girlfriend were held hostage by the French in Paris for nine months (from 24 August 2024 to 15 March 2025), Telegram is less secure. The French arrest was to force Telegram to install some external backdoors and monitoring into Telegram, where there had been none before. How much user privacy did Durov give up? It’s not public knowledge yet. Today one can assume that with a court order, any significant Western government can obtain an individual’s Telegram communication. Proton Mail is no better. Proton’s track record is to give up communication when faced with a French/Swiss court order.
You can’t betray secrets you don’t know
Signal cannot leak what it doesn’t have (which is the actual content of the communication, the network they do have and you should assume Signal does leak the network activity: due to Patriot Act/US domicile/US citizens/past CIA money, Signal have to give up whatever they have).
Which is why it’s so very important that Signal video and audio call quality improve. Signal is the only messenger app where it’s likely that the interlocutors enjoy real privacy during calls.
Moxie: less interviews, less moaning and more action please. The reason Signal users flock to Telegram is not security, it’s that Telegram actually works.
Alec Kinnear
Alec has been helping businesses succeed online since 2000. Alec is an SEM expert with a background in advertising, as a former Head of Television for Grey Moscow and Senior Television Producer for Bates, Saatchi and Saatchi Russia.
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