Telegram is prepared for this, in fact they are practically set up for this. They have been a safe haven communication service for people in communist countries around the world. In fact Telegram is how the recent CCP list was originally leaked. Telegram also has optional p2p encrypted chats where not even Telegram themselves could access your messages. It's a great service and I strongly recommend it (our family has been using it for years just because it's a slick messaging app, never knew the day would come we need it for the other reasons...)
Everything is encrypted by default. There are extra security options as mentioned though such as p2p messages where the message is never stored on servers as well as self destructing messages.
Telegram is prepared for this, in fact they are practically set up for this. They have been a safe haven communication service for people in communist countries around the world. In fact Telegram is how the recent CCP list was originally leaked. Telegram also has optional p2p encrypted chats where not even Telegram themselves could access your messages. It's a great service and I strongly recommend it (our family has been using it for years just because it's a slick messaging app, never knew the day would come we need it for the other reasons...)
Thoughts on how it stands up to Signal?
I'm not sure, I haven't used Signal.
Are all messages encrypted by default or do you have to create a group that's encrypted?
Everything is encrypted by default. There are extra security options as mentioned though such as p2p messages where the message is never stored on servers as well as self destructing messages.