Another proof that Telegram’s Secret Chats are the most secure way to communicate. The FBI got access to deleted messages in the U.S. government-funded app Signal simply by checking notification data. On Telegram, Secret Chats never show message content in push notifications, so unlike Signal and other supposedly secure apps, we don’t face this risk.

Turning off notification previews won’t make you safe if you use those apps — you never know whether the people you message have done the same. So Telegram’s Secret Chats design, which eliminates notification previews entirely, is the only solution. Obviously, this hurts usability, which is why Telegram has two types of chats: Secret and Cloud.

In general, apps that try to provide both security and usability in one type of chat end up with ugly compromises — like WhatsApp leaking 95% of messages through unencrypted backups, or Signal exposing messages through push notifications. The only way is to have two types of chats: 100% usable (Cloud) and 100% secure (Secret).

More than 12 years have passed since Telegram launched Secret Chats and started the end-to-end encryption revolution. Since then, dozens of apps have followed suit and made bold claims about their encryption. But no app has managed to beat our Cloud Chats in usability or our Secret Chats in security. They try to combine the two and end up with neither.