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Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

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Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#161

Post by eitland »

ericd wrote: post #151
eitland wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've done my research. Whatsapp has encrypted chats by default, Telegram doesn't. Telegram has encrypted chats by default, just not E2E-encrypted.

What does it mean that they're encrypted, but not E2E? That means the chats are MITM'd by the company, no? If you're talking about HTTPS, that's an incredibly low bar.

As far as I understand it it means keys goes one way, messages another way, so that no single jurisdiction can get hold of anyones messages by seizing the servers.

Warning: the above is just my very simplified explanation of my understanding of what I read a while ago.

Edit: again, this is based on something I read a while ago, but I think Gmail has or had a similar system where you have to have access to two different places in the system to get hold of the messages, so yes, Google can get hold of anyones messages bjt it is not like anyone can do a select * from messages where accountid = 12345. (And this is not how I think they store the mails anyway :-)

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#162

Post by eitland »

saagarjha wrote: post #149
tazjin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another clear distinction: Telegram has proper native clients and an open protocol.

> Telegram has proper native clients They're not: they reimplement their own frameworks on top of relatively low-level UI primitives.

Sounds native to me.

Non-native to me is typically a a pure web client or when you use Java Swing or Electron.

What do you mean by native?

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#163

Post by saagarjha »

eitland wrote: post #162
saagarjha wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Telegram has proper native clients They're not: they reimplement their own frameworks on top of relatively low-level UI primitives.

Sounds native to me. Non-native to me is typically a a pure web client or when you use Java Swing or Electron. What do you mean by native?

I generally have a strict definition of native which means “using platform widgets”. Telegram doesn’t do this because it makes its own copies of almost everything.

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#164

Post by emptysongglass »

saagarjha wrote: post #148
mattnguyen wrote: post #120

A growing number of people and organizations are starting to choose Telegram over Slack. This became prevalent in the blockchain space where pretty much everyone prefers Telegram to other messaging apps. OTC brokers, quant funds, and the largest exchanges use Telegram in some capacity, some almost exclusively. Since the official Telegram clients are open source and the org encourages open competition between third pa…

> Since the official Telegram clients are open source They're not really all that open.

This statement is factually wrong. The server code is not open source but the clients are fully open.

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#165

Post by kevincox »

I think the idea is useful for large groups however a simple "cool down period" is far too simple. Something like "10 messages an hour" would be far more useful I think as you can still have quick and efficient exchanges while preventing the ability for any single user to be dominant.

However even that is too simple. You would need to pair it with good UX so users aren't stuck without messages when someone is asking them a question.

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#166

Post by fwn »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #147
StavrosK wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait wait wait what? Does this mean they disable encryption, or just that the messages will be as "unprotected" as being affected with a key logger?

Presumably they expect the OS security primitives to work in a particular way, and since they can't rely on that from a rooted device they just don't bother.

How would I know whether the person I'm writing to has a rooted phone?

I'm not a security expert, but this sounds like an obvious problem.

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#167

Post by xanipher »

pilif wrote: post #153
pentae wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is still a step up from what most people use (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp). And if you really want a chat to be secure it's easy to set one up. I find it to be a perfect blend of security and usability. Saying it's only good for stickers is pretty disingenuous

Seeing that WhatsApp is using the signal protocol and encrypts all communications by default, I contest the notion that Telegram with its home-grown protocol and clear text by default is a step up.

I thought Telegram was sending messages encrypted (though not E2E) per default?

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#168

Post by saagarjha »

emptysongglass wrote: post #164
saagarjha wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since the official Telegram clients are open source They're not really all that open.

This statement is factually wrong. The server code is not open source but the clients are fully open.

The clients aren’t “fully open”, since their source doesn’t match the binaries that Telegram distributes.

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#169

Post by tialaramex »

StavrosK wrote: post #98
NicoJuicy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia is much worse, trying to destabilize Western democracy. And no, it's not FUD

By "western" you mean "US" and by "democracy" you mean "the system that elects presidents with a minority vote"?

No, he means Western, including the EU for example, which maintains https://euvsdisinfo.eu/ a site collecting Russian disinformation. Right now because Americans spend two years every four years fighting an election they are focused on the US (although with some border stuff continuing to persuade Ukrainians that actually Russia are the good guys as they continue to invade that country...) but if you go back a few months there's plenty to underscore the destabilising message that the EU are actually Nazis and if only everybody would put Russia in charge that'd be so much nicer...

Re: Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

#170

Post by VvR-Ox »

pilif wrote: post #153
pentae wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is still a step up from what most people use (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp). And if you really want a chat to be secure it's easy to set one up. I find it to be a perfect blend of security and usability. Saying it's only good for stickers is pretty disingenuous

Seeing that WhatsApp is using the signal protocol and encrypts all communications by default, I contest the notion that Telegram with its home-grown protocol and clear text by default is a step up.

And you just trust Facebook to somehow really encrypt everything in this black-box? I think this is naive as Facebook has always lied to us and proved it isn't a trustworthy entity.

WA used to steal your contacts by default to improve Facebook's data set and probably still does.

The Telegram guy however left his country because he didn't want to cooperate with such entities (like the Kremlin which for me is kind of another organization that seeks to harm your privacy among other goals and is therefor comparable to FB and other spy-companies).

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