this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] turkishdelight@lemmy.ml 6 points 11 months ago (4 children)

You know Telegram is secure when every government in the world is trying to ban it.

[–] punkisundead@slrpnk.net 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Just use Signal if you want an easy, relatively privacy friendly and secure messenger.

Telegram hands over data to goverments, is infested with spammers and scammers and its encryption is not end to end for group chat which lets Telegram access those chats.

Edit: Telegram is great for lots of things like big groups, communities, piracy, drugs etc but its just not the place where you should expect secure communication.

[–] turkishdelight@lemmy.ml 11 points 11 months ago (5 children)

I'm not using Signal as long as Signal Foundation is based in the US. Also Signal is not on FDroid, so I can't use it anyway.

[–] heyfrancis@lemmy.ml 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I installed Signal via Obtanium. Just use this URL when searching/adding the app

https://signal.org/android/apk/

[–] Salix@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why would you need to use obtanium to get the Signal apk file from that link?

You can just download the apk from that website and install it. The app can update itself.

[–] heyfrancis@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The app doesn't auto update for me.

[–] Salix@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

Huh, that's strange. On my 3 Android devices, I downloaded the APK from the website, and it always auto-updates.

It existed ever since they added the APK to their website as a compromise for people who don't want to get Signal from the Play Store.

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] turkishdelight@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago

It's Signal Foundation's hostility to open and non-Google platforms that is very disturbing.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

But Russian/UAE-based Telegram is fine? 😂

Also, it really doesn't matter where Signal is based, as long as it's client code is open source and it uses E2EE by default. Telegram doesn't encrypt chats by default, and even if you enable 'secret chats' it uses a pretty weak encryption protocol.

Btw the official version of Telegram isn't available on F-Droid either, only a fork called Telegram-FOSS. You can get the exact same thing for Signal from a 3rd-party repo: https://www.twinhelix.com/apps/signal-foss/, or use Molly.

[–] turkishdelight@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 months ago

Absolutely not.

[–] punkisundead@slrpnk.net 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This might not be relevant because you have other reasons not to use Signal, but you can get android signal directly from their website and via aurora store (on fdroid)

[–] turkishdelight@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It's more the attitude that bothers me. Signal's refusal to support alternative appstores and clients is very disturbing. It gives the impression that Signal is a honeypot.

[–] punkisundead@slrpnk.net 15 points 11 months ago

You seem to have really high standards around who you trust and in the same moment you call Telegram secure. I feel like you should atleast use the same amount of scepticism for Telegram that you use for Signal.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The official version of Telegram isn't available on F-Droid either, and it doesn't use end-to-end encryption by default, so it's much more likely that it is a honeypot

[–] DivisionResult@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That is not the official Telegram app. It is a fork called "Telegram-FOSS". If you go to the F-Droid page and click on 'Source code', you will see that it links to this repo: https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS

This is the description of that GitHub repository:

Unofficial, FOSS-friendly fork of the original Telegram client for Android

[–] twig@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Signal releases their own self-updating apk on their site, and this release doesn't use Google services for push notifications. There are legitimate reasons why publishers sometimes avoid f-droid.

Also there's Molly, which is a signal fork that allows database encryption; or Session, which doesn't require a phone number for account registration and is decentralized. Both of these forks have repos that you can add to f-droid.

I do understand the hesitance to use a platform that has its infrastructure in the US, but I will say that international compliance with the US is a problem even if the infrastructure is located elsewhere. Session is a really promising option, since it's decentralized, and I'd love to see more people using it.

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 2 points 11 months ago

It would be better even if they just hosted an F-droid repo for their app. If they don't trust the f-droid organization with building the app, that's fine I guess. But as I'm aware, they had said no to allf of what is f-droid.

[–] Artyom@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The CEO is a Russian, the company is based out of Dubai, and messages aren't encrypted by default. In fact, only private messages can be encrypted, group messages cannot. Telegram is not a trustworthy platform and a champion for user privacy like most people think, Signal is what you're looking for.

[–] turkishdelight@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago

All of that is more reliable then an entity based in the US.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip -2 points 11 months ago

WTF is this ignorant "I know what they want but I'm smarter" crap, if you don't know how it works you know nothing, and "what they want" you get from news.

I know of a few governments not trying to really. Like the Russian one.

Read something about its internals before saying something as stupid.

XMPP with OMEMO is secure (not for targeted attacks, in that case you'll just get a trojan on your Android device via some unclosed vulnerability and finita la comedia, or rubber hose cryptanalysis will be applied).