Yeah this is what I settled on as well. I still use GMail and PGP for those very few who are willing to go the extra route (like 2 people I know), but use it unencrypted 99.9999% of the time, and secure comms go out over Signal.

But PGP doesn't offer forward encryption, does it?

Telegram shouldn't be considered secure due to the lack of e2e encryption by default.

That's nonsense, security isn't only about E2E. Telegram is encrypted between clients and their servers, and are stored encrypted in their cloud services (at least if we trust what they say), a defaults that trade some level of privacy/security in exchange of a better UX, but you can decide to do the opposite trade by creating E2E discussions. How does that make their system not secure?

Because 99% of people will choose the option with better UX instead of E2E.

I can grab any device (laptop, phone, tablet) and continue my group chats in Telegram.

E2E would require me to use only one device for that specific chat, which is makes it really hard to explain to a layperson.

Nope, there are plenty of chats with e2ee and all the conveniences you’re mentioned.

Do you have examples? A chat application that has E2E and also let you carry your conversations between devices, that doesn't require you to pass through your mobile the way WhatsApp do it?

Wire (wire.com) has done it. You can install Wire on multiple devices and have the chats sync up. Every chat is E2E encrypted, one-to-one or group chats.

Even Signal Desktop does not require the communication to pass through the phone (or even to have the phone around after setup). WhatsApp is the odd one in this respect.

How does Wire do it?

Regarding Signal, they say this on their website:

> Signal Desktop is a Chrome app which links with your phone, so all incoming and outgoing messages are displayed consistently on all your devices.

https://signal.org/blog/signal-desktop/

That seems similar to what WhatsApp does, but I haven’t tried myself. Do you have more details on how that would work without passing by the mobile app?

It links to your phone to authenticate you. But from there, all messages are sent and received directly from the servers to all clients. So if your phone is off, but your desktop is on, the desktop client still receives them.

The catch is that if your desktop is off, it won't be able to "catch up" later on any messages that it missed. Although I don't see why that's impossible to implement in principle.

Matrix as well. https://matrix.org/blog/2020/05/06/cross-signing-and-end-to-...

I would like an example of even one of these, please?

Especially how they handle E2E encryption between multiple devices owned by the same user, without using one device as proxy.

Wire, Viber, iMessage, Keybase, Signal.

Here’s how Wire works https://wire-docs.wire.com/download/Wire+Security+Whitepaper...

Here’s Signal’s multi device protocol https://signal.org/docs/specifications/sesame/

Here’s Viber’s security white paper https://www.viber.com/app/uploads/Viber-Encryption-Overview....

> E2E would require me to use only one device for that specific chat, which is makes it really hard to explain to a layperson.

Not necessarily. It is hard, but Wire (wire.com) has done it. You can install Wire on multiple devices and have the chats sync up. Every chat is E2E encrypted, one-to-one or group chats.

Depends on if you can talk your contacts into using it. What I'm more worried about (as a Telegram user) is the lack of metadata protection (contacts stored on the server for example).