Signal vs Telegram: What Privacy-Focused Users Are Getting Wrong About Both Apps

Fact-checked by the SnapMessages editorial team

Updated August 2026

People keep framing Signal vs Telegram privacy as a contest between two encrypted apps. That framing is wrong from the start. Telegram isn’t end-to-end encrypted by default, and the distance between what users assume they have and what they actually have is wide enough to cause real harm. Backlinko’s 2025 analysis of Telegram’s own data puts the platform at 1 billion monthly active users, and most of them are typing into cloud chats that Telegram’s servers can read.

Share a therapy check-in, a medication update, or anything else sensitive through a messaging app, and mistaking “popular” for “private” stops being a minor setup oversight. It becomes a health-data vulnerability.

Why Default Encryption Matters More Than You Think

Telegram skips end-to-end encryption for standard messages, group chats, and channels. Signal doesn’t skip it for anything, automatically. That one sentence tells you most of what you need to decide between them.

Telegram’s cloud chat setup stores message content on its own servers in a form the company can retrieve. There’s nothing hidden or debatable about that. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s January 2026 “Encrypt It Already” campaign named Telegram directly, pushing it to make end-to-end encryption the default for direct messages and labeling the gap a “Defaults Matter” problem. The EFF doesn’t throw that phrase around casually.

Signal, meanwhile, runs the Signal Protocol across every message, call, and video chat with zero opt-in required. Security firm Cure53 has audited that protocol repeatedly, and WhatsApp, Google Messages, and Meta Messenger have all licensed it for their own encrypted features. Competitors adopting your encryption is about as strong a technical endorsement as exists.

What Telegram’s own documentation says

Telegram’s FAQ page lays out two chat types as a deliberate choice, not an accident. Cloud chats sit on Telegram’s servers so you get multi-device convenience; Secret Chats offer end-to-end encryption but only after you turn them on yourself. Nobody’s covering anything up here. Anyone who assumes Telegram is fully private out of the box is misreading the product rather than getting deceived by it. Still, that distinction hands the burden of understanding to the user in a way most apps don’t.

Why Secret Chats Are a Poor Substitute for Real Privacy

Telegram’s Secret Chats do offer end-to-end encryption, but the feature is buried deep enough that it’s functionally out of reach for most of the platform’s billion users.

You have to activate Secret Chats manually, one conversation at a time. They’re tied to a single device, so messages won’t sync to your tablet or laptop. Group chats can’t use them at all, and group chats are where most Telegram communities actually live. Starting one means tapping a contact’s name, digging into a sub-menu, and finding “Start Secret Chat,” a sequence nobody stumbles onto without being told exactly where to look.

The outcome isn’t surprising. Give people a secure option that takes effort next to a convenient option that’s already on, and the convenient one wins nearly every time. People sharing sensitive health details in Telegram groups, therapy accountability circles, medication support communities, mental health check-ins, are doing it in a mode that isn’t end-to-end encrypted, often while assuming it is.

There’s a psychological cost worth naming directly. The gap between feeling protected and actually being protected creates its own kind of dissonance. For someone managing health anxiety or looking for a safe space to talk, false security can do more damage than honest risk, because it kills the motivation to actually protect yourself. If you’re auditing how you handle sensitive conversations across apps generally, the guide on securing your messaging apps before international travel walks through several concrete steps that apply just as well at home.

What Signal Gets Wrong: The Phone Number Problem

Signal is still the better tool here, but it isn’t flawless, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone. Until recently, registering meant handing over a phone number, tying an account straight to a real identity. For activists, survivors of domestic abuse, people in recovery, or anyone in a sensitive health support network, that’s not a hypothetical risk. It’s a concrete one.

Signal fixed part of this in 2024 by rolling out usernames. You can now message someone without them ever seeing your phone number; by default, that number stays hidden from non-contacts. It’s a real architectural fix, one many other write-ups haven’t caught up with, so you’ll still see the stale claim that “Signal requires your phone number” repeated as if nothing changed.

The configuration gap that still exists

What’s left is a behavior problem, not a technical one. Usernames stay optional. Phone number visibility isn’t locked to maximum privacy out of the box. You have to go into Settings, then Privacy, then Phone Number, and switch visibility from “My Contacts” to “Nobody” before the username system actually shields you. Almost nobody does this. The protection is built in, but it only works if you flip the switch, putting it in roughly the same bucket as Telegram’s Secret Chats: available on paper, ignored in practice.

For a broader look at building habits around settings like these, the article on building a personal digital security routine lays out a structured approach that doesn’t demand you become a security expert overnight.

How Metadata Can Reveal More Than Messages Ever Will

Strong encryption on your messages says nothing about what happens to your metadata, and for people in health-sensitive communities, metadata can give away more than the actual content ever would. Who you message, how often, and at what hour builds a pattern. That pattern can mark you as part of a support group, a therapy client, or someone managing a specific condition, without anyone reading a single word you wrote.

Signal tackles this problem more directly than any other mainstream messaging app, through a feature called Sealed Sender. It hides the sender’s identity from Signal’s own servers, so even Signal can’t tell who’s messaging whom in a given exchange. This isn’t a slogan on a landing page. It’s a documented architectural choice that puts Signal in a different category from every other mainstream option when metadata is the concern.

Telegram’s cloud setup, by design, keeps metadata around because that’s what powers its multi-device sync and search. Nothing sinister in the intent, that’s just how the architecture works. But the fallout is real. Telegram fulfilled 900 U.S. law enforcement data requests in 2024 alone, touching 2,253 users, according to TechCrunch’s analysis of Telegram’s transparency reporting. That figure marked a real policy shift, concentrated in Q4 2024 after founder Pavel Durov’s legal troubles in France.

Early 2025 showed just how big that shift got. The Freedom of the Press Foundation reported that Telegram handed over data on 22,777 users globally in Q1 2025, up from 5,826 in Q1 2024. Call it a nearly fourfold jump in twelve months.

Signal’s record looks nothing like that. When a U.S. federal grand jury subpoenaed Signal in 2021 for a user’s name, address, contacts, and call records, Signal handed over exactly two data points: the account creation date and the date of last connection to Signal’s servers. That’s not marketing copy. It’s a documented federal court record. If you’re managing sensitive health conversations through messaging apps, it’s also worth understanding how disappearing messages actually behave; the article on how disappearing messages work across different apps covers those mechanics in detail.

Which App to Use, and When to Use Both

The honest answer isn’t “switch to Signal and delete Telegram.” Both apps have legitimate uses, and figuring out which conversation belongs on which app matters more than crowning a single winner.

Reach for Signal whenever the topic is genuinely sensitive: therapy progress, medication schedules, mental health check-ins, abuse recovery, chronic illness updates, medical diagnoses. The EFF’s February 2025 community privacy guide states plainly that Signal “provides the most extensive privacy protections” among common messaging apps and tells users who need group-chat privacy to move off Telegram. That’s a specific recommendation from a credible source, not a matter of taste.

Telegram still earns its keep for public channels, big community groups, broadcast-style posting, and anything where privacy simply isn’t the point. Its feature set is richer, its user base dwarfs Signal’s (70 million monthly active users for Signal versus Telegram’s 1 billion, per Signal’s own data), and there’s a real social cost to demanding every contact switch platforms for you.

Running both apps at once, each doing its own job, isn’t a cop-out. It’s the sustainable choice. Chasing one perfect tool and pressuring reluctant contacts to follow you there creates its own stress, and that stress is a wellness cost too. Aim for deliberate choices, not platform purity. For a look at how social engineering exploits this same kind of misplaced trust, read the piece on how hackers exploit social engineering alongside this one.

Three things are worth doing this week, and none of them require paranoia, just informed self-care: set Signal’s phone number visibility to “Nobody” under Privacy settings, confirm which Telegram chats are actually end-to-end encrypted (spoiler: none, unless you manually started a Secret Chat), and pick one app specifically for sensitive health conversations going forward. These are one-time decisions, not a recurring chore, and the whole thing takes under ten minutes.

The Hidden Cost of Privacy, and Why Signal’s Model Matters

Signal’s $50 million annual operating cost, projected for 2025, comes entirely from donations and grants. That’s not a financial burden; it’s a design choice. Unlike Telegram, which relies on Premium subscriptions and business tools, Signal’s funding model means it has no incentive to collect user data or sell access to advertisers. The cost of privacy is borne by supporters, not by users.

For context: Telegram’s 1 billion users, while massive, are not all paying. Only a fraction subscribe to Premium. Signal’s 70 million active users, smaller as that number is, get backed by donors who value privacy over convenience. The arithmetic is stark: Signal’s cost structure works because it’s built on trust, not data mining. Divide that $50 million budget across 70 million users and you land at about $0.71 per user per year. Less than a dollar a year for a service that protects your entire digital life. Telegram’s model, by contrast, depends on monetizing the majority of users who never pay a cent.

A Real-World Case: When Privacy Is Health, Not Just a Setting

Say you’ve got a 620 credit score, need roughly $8,000 for a medical procedure, and you’re managing anxiety from a recent diagnosis. Your conversations with your therapist and a mental health support group matter a lot more than which app you happen to be using. But run those conversations through Telegram, and you’re discussing a treatment plan inside a system the platform itself can read, metadata included. That data could, in theory, land in front of law enforcement or get handed over in response to a subpoena. Signal’s Sealed Sender and default encryption mean your therapist’s notes, your medication schedule, and your check-ins stay private, not just from hackers, but from Signal itself.

Choosing Signal isn’t about paranoia. It’s about matching your tools to your actual needs. Switching costs almost nothing. Staying on Telegram for anything health-related costs a lot more than most people realize.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Telegram end-to-end encrypted by default?

No. Telegram only uses end-to-end encryption in manually activated Secret Chats, which are not available for group chats. Standard and group chats use cloud encryption, meaning Telegram’s servers can access message content, according to Telegram’s official documentation.

What data can Signal hand over to law enforcement?

Almost nothing. When subpoenaed by a U.S. federal grand jury in 2021, Signal could only provide the account creation date and the date the account last connected to Signal’s servers. No message content, no contact lists, no call records. This is documented in Signal’s published court response, not a marketing claim.

Does Signal still require a phone number?

Yes, a phone number is required to register. However, Signal introduced a username system in 2024 that lets users hide their number from contacts. To fully protect privacy, users must manually set phone number visibility to “Nobody” in Privacy settings, a step most users skip.

Are Telegram Secret Chats truly secure?

Yes, but only if activated. Secret Chats use end-to-end encryption, but they must be manually enabled per conversation, do not sync across devices, and are unavailable for groups. These limitations mean they are rarely used, despite being the only secure option in Telegram.

Which app is safer for sharing health information?

Signal is significantly safer. It uses end-to-end encryption by default for all message types, hides sender identities via Sealed Sender, and has a documented history of handing over minimal data to law enforcement. Telegram’s cloud architecture and increasing data-sharing with authorities make it unsuitable for sensitive health conversations.

What is Sealed Sender and why does it matter?

Sealed Sender is a Signal feature that hides the sender’s identity from Signal’s own servers during message delivery. This prevents even Signal from logging who is messaging whom, a critical protection for metadata-sensitive communications like therapy or support group check-ins.

Why should I avoid using Telegram for group chats?

Telegram does not offer end-to-end encryption for group chats. All group chats use cloud encryption, meaning Telegram’s servers can access the content. For users in health support groups, this creates a serious privacy risk, especially when sensitive topics are discussed.

Can I trust Telegram’s security claims?

No, not without verification. Telegram’s MTProto protocol has undergone fewer independent audits than Signal’s protocol. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized Telegram’s default encryption model, and data-sharing reports show a significant increase in law enforcement requests since late 2024.

Is Signal fully private?

Signal provides the strongest default privacy among mainstream apps. But it still requires users to configure privacy settings like phone number visibility. The core encryption is strong and automatic, but full privacy depends on active user decisions.

How does Telegram’s data-sharing compare to Signal’s?

Telegram shared data on 22,777 users globally in Q1 2025 alone, a fourfold increase from the same period in 2024. Signal, in contrast, could provide only two data points, creation date and last connection date, when subpoenaed in 2021, per its public court filing.