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All of Telegram's Lies About Privacy (donald.cat)

submitted 3 days ago by columbus@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] Peasley@lemmy.world 67 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (8 children)

Nothing new here. E2E is only available in one on one chats and is disabled by default. Dont use Telegram if privacy is your main concern.

At least it has an open-source client. Very few messaging platforms can say that, and fewer have a decent UX.

It's not perfect, but it's got a good combination of features and multi-platform availability. None of the other messaging apps support all of my devices except Matrix, and ~~Matrix doesn't have stickers~~

Edit: Signal doesn't support all my devices but maybe someday! The network effect is also big. None of my family and friends are on Signal, but most have Telegram. A few have Matrix.

Also Signal is a US-based company.

Edit 2: Matrix does have stickers, i guess I'm switching

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 0 points 13 hours ago

E2E is only available in one on one chats and is disabled by default.

Considering that there's no technical problem with enabling it for all one-on-one chats, this tells a lot.

Also no E2EE on desktops.

I hate TG's UX. It's atrocious. WhatsApp is the closest to something normal, but imperfect too.

At least it has an open-source client.

Chromium is an open-source browser.

OK, more specifically - what matters is that TG's protocol is a big ugly target moving fast. So its official client with released sources is in practice the only one. There are things like libpurple plugin and some python TUI client and an emacs one, but they are all lagging behind. And I think they are all using official tdlib.

This tells something too, that their talk about possibility of alternative clients is of the same kind as their talk about privacy.

About the network effect - bring your family and friends to Signal one by one. Of course it won't happen overnight.

[–] candyman337@sh.itjust.works 69 points 3 days ago (7 children)

Signal

[–] anamethatisnt@lemmy.world 33 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, the glaring problem of having to share your phone number is gone too:
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/6712070553754-Phone-Number-Privacy-and-Usernames

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 12 points 3 days ago (4 children)

They still tie it to your ID since you need the phone number.

And we just trust them not to share your social map to NSA which they totally don't do. Trust me bro

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The NSA already has your social map from Apple, Google, Facebook/whatsapp, plus a hundred other sources you've given access to your contacts in the past decade.

Even if you've never used any of those, or given any app access to your contacts, 99% of your contacts have.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Data is about as good as it is current though and many people are reducing their exposure to these parasites

A person can now pretty easily go without logging into any of these apps with a few adjustments.

Hence why signal relationship maps will be even more valuable going forward. Hence my theory about signal...

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I'm not getting you.

There's correspondence, there's metadata, and there's phone-ID relationship.

Signal still protects #1 and #2 better than #3. And the way it works, infrastructure load is much bigger than for most other messaging platforms. So it makes total sense they limit registration somehow .

I'm not sure I remember by now what I've read about Signal protocol, but I think the fact of who messages whom they don't have, so it's not just trust.

~~Anyway, if you've read about 90s' mixmaster servers for mail, while Signal developers don't approve of alternative clients, there are libraries and it's possible to make some kind of a mixmaster bot. ~~

I've left this, because it's funny as a good illustration of why they don't want alternative clients, among other things - because I've described a voluntary MITM.

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago

I'm way more concerned about the privacy of what I say than who I say it to.

[–] anamethatisnt@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That they do, but your contacts doesn't have to get it anymore.
A self-hosted matrix stack built from source with matrix clients built from source with e2ee implemented that you yourself have the competence to verify the encryption and safety of would be the only secure communication I know of if you don't want to trust a third party.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 3 points 3 days ago (3 children)

At the very least XMPP and Simplex, which are easier to host and lighter.

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[–] explore_broaden@midwest.social 6 points 3 days ago (4 children)

They still don’t have backups on iOS which is a deal-breaker for me.

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[–] Peasley@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I couldnt find a working Ubuntu touch app last i tried to use it

[–] michael_palmer@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ubuntu touch is dead. Are there at least native browsers for it?

[–] Peasley@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Is it? I still get regular updates. Yes there are a few, i use Morph

https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/

[–] michael_palmer@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 day ago

For some reason, I thought Ubuntu touch was EOL. Probably because I tried it on a Redmi 5 and it was an unofficial 2018 build. Is the Morph browser still supported? I checked the Github page and the last changes were 3 years ago.

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[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 33 points 3 days ago (2 children)

A platform that values my privacy? Or stickers? Tough choice, I guess, except Signal has both.

[–] reev@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 days ago

Doesn't have unlimited storage though. It's really nice being able to jump to any of the 15,000+ images shared with a single person dating back to like 2015 within a couple seconds. I know that's a privacy concern but nothing comes close to telegram's searchability and the unlimited storage.

[–] Peasley@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

It's a messaging app, it's useless if there is nobody to message. I dont have any friends using signal yet.

Also it doesnt work on my phone (Ubuntu touch). There used to be a community app but it's not currently working.

I sincerely wish them success, but it's hard to have faith that a US-based company will actually protect your privacy. Not that Telegram does either. I dont know what information they do even collect.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

It's hard to have faith that a US-based company will actually protect your privacy.

You don't have to, though? 1) The E2EE Signal protocol is well-audited to be robust. 2) The app itself is FOSS, and there are a lot of eyes on it. 3) The server code is FOSS. Even if they're lying about what code they use, it doesn't matter because it's E2EE. 4) If you think Signal might be bait-and-switching by building from different source code, you'd be provably wrong. They have reproducible builds, so were they to actually try this, it would be like sending up a flare to the entire security community. 5) Literally every single time OWS has been subpoenaed, the only information they've been able to provide is extremely basic metadata like server connection times.

You have no idea what you're talking about, I'm sorry. There's functionally less "trust" here than any messaging application on the planet. The network effect remark is at least valid and can be debated (although I personally have zero friends who use Telegram and at least several who use Signal). This one is just so, so wrong that it's not even up for debate.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

Not just that, but also it's small in description. If you read their papers, they are very easy to understand. I suppose that's intentional, clarity and simplicity are among the main criteria of anything intended for security.
"A lot of eyes" is overvalued. There are a lot of eyes on every nation-state in history too, you tell me how that works.
It doesn't matter because of protocol design. They've solved very complex problems and have not stopped doing that. E2EE is the wrong buzzword, zero-knowledge is the right one. No, I'm not remotely qualified enough to explain what that is.
Still supply chain attack on clients is the most probable, but not much they can do with it. It's similar to fearing trojans on user devices. Yes, 3-letter agencies and such most likely will do that, not bother with pressuring Signal developers. And no, there's not much you can do to defend against a targeted attack, if it's targeted, then you've already bothered people you shouldn't have.
Well, it's not as if one could avoid that. It all lies in the area of smart contracts and distributed computing then, and see point 1, right now Signal's protocol can be in general strokes understood by someone like me. If they make something like that, it won't be. Everything is a compromise.

There’s functionally less “trust” here than any messaging application on the planet.

I think Wire and maybe Session use slightly modified Signal protocol. But Signal itself is the thing, made by people with clear vision of the whole architecture, model, which is not limited to protocols, but also to sociology, human psychology, politics. And they've explained literally every architectural decision of theirs in articles.

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[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 17 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Matrix does have stickers

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

Problem I have with matrix is that, afaik, does not currently support temporal or self destructing messages. Which is a big no-no for privacy conscious usage.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I am enjoying SimpleX chat

[–] viking@infosec.pub 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I tried it, and it looks decent, but there wasn't a single person I know around.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

I'm not surprised due to my involvement in the Monero community, at least some people I know from previous online chat rooms are there, but I don't know anybody directly in person like from my day-to-day life that uses it.

[–] r0ertel@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Can you elaborate on your last sentence? Is the US more or less trustworthy than alternatives?

[–] Peasley@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Less than some. The US gov has a history of forcing US-based corporations to disclose private data regardless of their policies or the law.

I can't give you a good alternative though. I'm sure the same thing happens in many countries

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[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 days ago

Stickers are pointless if I have no one to send them to. So I stay in telegram.

[–] Scolding7300@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Signal didn't work for some back in 2021/2020 and wasn't supported on old devices, now I'm stuck with Telegram.

At least I'm not part of FB's social graph and have some friends that now use something other than WhatsApp

[–] essteeyou@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Who didn't it work for? I switched to Signal in about 2016 or so, and haven't had a problem with it. Admittedly I'm a software developer, and typically use high-end devices, so my knowledge is severely lacking.

[–] Scolding7300@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

There was a surge of signups when WhatsApp changed its ToS to allow businesses to record/save conversations. Signal had issues with signing up. At that time it also didn't support LG G4 phones anymore.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago

I used it on lower-end devices around that time, but not bottom-of-the-barrel (Motorola smartphones). I had a Moto x4 then Moto G Power, and Signal worked fine on them. When Signal stopped working for SMS, I stopped using it, but I think I got my SO on board, so I'm back to using it for messaging.

[–] michael_palmer@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago

Enshitification in action. During 2024, Telegram declared war on rooted Android alongside WhatsApp and Viber. This means you can't log in to your account if you have root access or if you don't have Google services.

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