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“How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

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71–80 of 319 posts

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#71
post #17
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only more people used Telegram.. I love it, but only a couple of friends use it.

There was a serious FUD campaign started by one of the developers of now competing app Signal a few years ago. Now if you mention Telegram on Reddit you're immediately bombed with "OMG TELEGRAM CRYPTO IS BROKEN!" even though 0 people on earth have ever provably decrypted a Telegram message. They even offered a $300K bounty where you could act as the server... no takers.

How much is a Telegram exploit worth? Maybe more than $300K.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#72
post #8

Or... you know... just use something like Telegram that isn't owned by Facebook. Their data-sharing / privacy policy is pretty simple https://telegram.org/privacy 1. Sharing data We never share your data with anyone. No.

It's not clear to me why anyone would use Telegram over Signal.

Features / usability over perceived improvements to privacy / security.

If you had actually used both, it would be clear why people use Telegram over Signal.

Signal doesn't even have a desktop client for any OS!

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#73
post #68

This is an incredibly ugly dark pattern. The 'share information with Facebook' nugget is hidden behind a toggle at the bottom of the screen, and will be guaranteed to be missed by the 99% of users who just want to talk to their friends. Then, once you've agreed to the terms and conditions, you've got a completely arbitrary 30 days to read an online article which tells you what you've signed up for before WhatsApp is…

Most don't like hearing this: if you don't want your personal information to be shared, don't use these "social media" tools. I suspect that you'd be familiar with LinkedIn dark patterns [0] too. [0] https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark-patterns-3ae...

It's not that simple. There are many many ways that your information can end up being referenced in an identity graph and be discoverable by Facebook that don't involve signing up for Facebook at all. It's more - don't sign into a public wifi network, don't hand over your email address at a checkout, don't sign up for a store card.. oh, and don't sign up for Facebook either.

Not just that, but even if your number is not shared with Facebook, but Facebook knows that ten of your friends all contact you three times a week, you're still in the graph even if you're not personally receiving advertising.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#74
post #8

Or... you know... just use something like Telegram that isn't owned by Facebook. Their data-sharing / privacy policy is pretty simple https://telegram.org/privacy 1. Sharing data We never share your data with anyone. No.

It's not clear to me why anyone would use Telegram over Signal.

Signal has a Google Play Services dependency and through that makes meta-data visible to Google.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#75
post #30
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only more people used Telegram.. I love it, but only a couple of friends use it.

For me, Telegram's small user base is actually what got me on it. My whatsapp is full of way too many groups that I can't leave without negative social consequences. So the one group that I cared about the most (a group with my siblings), we all decided to move to Telegram and haven't looked back since! It's awesome to just have the few closest people on an app and not having to fear that you'll accidentally send a m…

They hit 100 million monthly active users back in Feb. I'm not sure that's a small user base by most of our terms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Usage_numb...

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#76
post #18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only more people used Telegram.. I love it, but only a couple of friends use it.

does Telegram offer voice messages and calls?

Recorded voice messages yes.

Live / phone call style voice messages no.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversations.im has made great progress in making XMPP usable on mobile devices, although its services don't seem ready for public adoption quite yet. There are very few XMPP servers which support the XEPs Conversations does so while federation is theoretically possible, it is not yet a reality. https://account.conversations.im/

Thanks. I can't really justify using a paid XMPP service, though. I was hoping for something indefinitely free. (Maybe I should look into running my own server...)

If you only need voice + video, Ostel has been running for a few years.

https://ostel.co/

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#78
post #8

Or... you know... just use something like Telegram that isn't owned by Facebook. Their data-sharing / privacy policy is pretty simple https://telegram.org/privacy 1. Sharing data We never share your data with anyone. No.

Telegram uses a home-brewed crypto protocol and posted a challenge to break it by pasting some ciphertext. In my eyes they're ridiculous. Just use Signal Messager.

Signal uses a home-brewed crypto protocol(^) and their CTO disallows third party clients, even based on their own open source code.

Just use XMPP.

(^) Granted, moxie can be considered a crypto expert, and the design got some public auditing.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#79
post #30
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only more people used Telegram.. I love it, but only a couple of friends use it.

For me, Telegram's small user base is actually what got me on it. My whatsapp is full of way too many groups that I can't leave without negative social consequences. So the one group that I cared about the most (a group with my siblings), we all decided to move to Telegram and haven't looked back since! It's awesome to just have the few closest people on an app and not having to fear that you'll accidentally send a m…

Regarding negative social consequences ... Today I switched phones and wanted to transfer my Whatsapp contacts to the new phone. What Whatsapp did: Somehow they managed to delete me from each and every group I had been in, deleted every chat and I cannot access this anymore. I already had to explain to three friends why I left our group as they were furious because we had talked about important things in those groups.

Just to say this didn't happen with Telegram. Recovered everything smoothly with no errors.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#80
post #8

Or... you know... just use something like Telegram that isn't owned by Facebook. Their data-sharing / privacy policy is pretty simple https://telegram.org/privacy 1. Sharing data We never share your data with anyone. No.

Telegram uses a home-brewed crypto protocol and posted a challenge to break it by pasting some ciphertext. In my eyes they're ridiculous. Just use Signal Messager.

The author of Signal (Moxie Marlinspike) seems actively hostile to not only federation efforts but also compatibility with other clients, even one that only removed the dependency of Signal on Google Play Services: http://news.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/posts/signal-lock-in.ht...
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