Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be of such niceness if telegram was fully end-2-end encryption.
That's exactly what secret chats are.
I am still waiting for the day when I can initiate a secret chat from my desktop client.
Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats
101–110 of 128 posts
Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's an issue with your client and protocol, not with e2e That's issue with distributing the keys among multiple parties. > No shared history for group chats. > Same Exactly. What's e2e good for, if you give keys to the entity that does the archiving?
If you have 2 devices, one device can send messages to the other, all e2e encrypted. It's the same for group chats: if you are part of a chat, any participant can send you the history of the chat. All those issues are protocol-related. E2E only stipulates that the message can't be read between the two ends, it doesn't say you can't send a technical message for making a better UX.
> if you are part of a chat, any participant can send you the history of the chat.
Re-sending parts of the chat kind of removes the guarantees of the secret chat (just like backups defeat the purpose of e2e). These apps have also expiring and non-screenshotable messages, you don't want to resend that.
Ideally, all messages sent should be only decryptable by given set of keys (i.e. one key for each device used by each party of the chat; or, depending on the size of the message, ephemeral key used for message encryption, decryptable by each device that is supposed to receive it). Now the key distribution is the non-solved part.
Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are two kinds of things someone may want to hide: legal stuff and illegal stuff. It's a real shame that governments have succeeded in conflating the two and forcing us to take a position that is not the one we really have. Truly a brilliant move. Of course you have something to hide, it's called privacy. There is absolutely no reason your private life should be public by default, so why accept it ?
I fully understand. Privacy is important to me, but it's not a binary state. What I talk about to my friends, girlfriends and family are all on different "privacy levels". If the chats with my friends were disclosed, I'd probably be made a laughing stock at most but it's no big deal. My family ones would probably be most boring, and the ones with my girlfriend could be material for a soap opera, and embarrassing. But…
> If the chats with my friends were disclosed, I'd probably be made a laughing stock at most but it's no big deal.
That’s a privilege many people don’t have. Think about sexual preferences, controversial opinions or health problems that can be disadvantageous in their career or when obtaining insurance. Or that aren’t problematic now but might be in the political climate in 20 years.
You could argue that people worrying about this still have the choice to use an E2E encrypted messenger. After all different needs are served by different products. But if this behavior becomes the norm, people who hide possibly disadvantageous information can be identified simply by their messenger use, partially defying the purpose of hiding their information in the first place.
I consider this a very strong argument for privacy as the default regardless of particular people's lack of a need for privacy.
EDIT: Removed remarks that could be misunderstood as snark.
Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Secret chat with multiple devices or with group has the key distribution problem - what's good to receive the message, if you cannot read it? When there are exactly two devices, you avoid that problem. That's why it is not on by default and why it doesn't work for groups. Most users favor convenience over strict e2e.
> Secret chat with multiple devices or with group has the key distribution problem which is solvable Signal and Matrix have two distinct approaches to this
Sure, it is. But it has its own problem.
Signal, for example, copies the received messages into per-device queues that belong to the same identity. The problem for the user is that the user has no visibility into what is really assigned to his identity and where copies of his messages are routed encrypted by which keys; it could be used to implement anything between CALEA to Prism access.
I'm not familiar with the Matrix approach, so I won't comment on it.
Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are two kinds of things someone may want to hide: legal stuff and illegal stuff. It's a real shame that governments have succeeded in conflating the two and forcing us to take a position that is not the one we really have. Truly a brilliant move. Of course you have something to hide, it's called privacy. There is absolutely no reason your private life should be public by default, so why accept it ?
I fully understand. Privacy is important to me, but it's not a binary state. What I talk about to my friends, girlfriends and family are all on different "privacy levels". If the chats with my friends were disclosed, I'd probably be made a laughing stock at most but it's no big deal. My family ones would probably be most boring, and the ones with my girlfriend could be material for a soap opera, and embarrassing. But…
I have never used Telegram but not once have I ever read anyone being displeased with the experience; it's always about how it is the pinnacle of messengers. I'm a bit jealous about that because I want to experience it but I don't want to be tied to an app that doesn't do privacy by default.
Privacy is definitely not binary, but to me it is a bit like using Libre software. You can't realistically expect to live on the 21st century internet with the entirety of services and viewpoints it offers and only use Libre software. At this point you have to either follow your values and stick to a very small part of it that is guaranteed to work on your browser rejecting non-Free javascript, or you can make concessions and accept a bit of proprietary bits here and there. But you can still decide to be Libre-first and accept non-Libre from there, on a bit-by-bit basis. That is what I and others are talking about with e2ee first: Instead of asking "what is worth being hidden and being made public", I feel the more just mindset should be "supposing everything is private by default, what can I disclose and to whom". Your threat assumption regarding your conversations is a good example: of course every software has bugs and all your messages could be read by Telegram. But you're behaving as if Telegram might read it one day, when I believe you should believe as if Telegram is reading it every day. The danger is not that Telegram can make a soap opera out of your drama but that the whole world can.
As you say you take care what you write about and that is a good thing to do. So, following up: if you don't want anyone to be able to read it, then let's go to the end of this and make sure no one physically can read it, by default. Instead of asking what kind of conversations require e2e, let's ask what kind of conversation doesn't require e2e
Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats
#106I really like Telegram and these features but I don’t use it because they don’t have end2end encryption as default. Also you can’t create a secret group chat that you can start from your phone and continue from your Mac.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of discussion do you have that require e2e? Myself I use TG extensively with friends, family, girlfriend and I think I've used secret chats once when the gf wanted to send a naughty photo. It's not that I don't have anything to hide, it's just I choose what to say according to the environment and I feel the features of telegram far outweigh the con of not having e2e at all times.
I don't know how one can't be aware that Telegram is pretty well known for it's illegal content 2021.
Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have 2 devices, one device can send messages to the other, all e2e encrypted. It's the same for group chats: if you are part of a chat, any participant can send you the history of the chat. All those issues are protocol-related. E2E only stipulates that the message can't be read between the two ends, it doesn't say you can't send a technical message for making a better UX.
> if you are part of a chat, any participant can send you the history of the chat. Re-sending parts of the chat kind of removes the guarantees of the secret chat (just like backups defeat the purpose of e2e). These apps have also expiring and non-screenshotable messages, you don't want to resend that. Ideally, all messages sent should be only decryptable by given set of keys (i.e. one key for each device used by each…
"Secret chat" is something only Telegram and pseudo-private messengers have. No application can ever provide assurance that messages aren't backed up. When it's sent, it's sent; you don't control it anymore. Re-sending the message is something you can only assume can be done. The experience given with expiring messages is just that: an experience.
Now, secret chats don't necessarily mean "this message can only be read by one device". To answer your second paragrah I disagree: a message shouldn't be sent to a given set of keys but to a given set of participants. Each participant may have one or more devices and should be able to read messages whatever way they want.
Also key distribution is "solved" by not counting on the user to do it but doing it for them: see what Matrix, Signal, Deltachat, XMPP (OMEMO) and probably others are doing.
Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if you are part of a chat, any participant can send you the history of the chat. Re-sending parts of the chat kind of removes the guarantees of the secret chat (just like backups defeat the purpose of e2e). These apps have also expiring and non-screenshotable messages, you don't want to resend that. Ideally, all messages sent should be only decryptable by given set of keys (i.e. one key for each device used by each…
"Secret chat" is something only Telegram and pseudo-private messengers have. No application can ever provide assurance that messages aren't backed up. When it's sent, it's sent; you don't control it anymore. Re-sending the message is something you can only assume can be done. The experience given with expiring messages is just that: an experience. Now, secret chats don't necessarily mean "this message can only be rea…
I disagree; if you are sending to participants instead of devices, you don't really have e2e. Any private key should never leave any device. If the user want to use several devices, his client should enroll multiple keys for him and the message should be decryptable by each of these keys. Also, the user should have visibility into which keys can decrypt the message, to avoid enrolling any keys behind his back.
That the user won't see on his device any messages sent before enrolling the new key? That's the point. Otherwise, the user should use the normal/non-e2e messages.
Thus, the key distribution as it is "solved" is being lax with them.
Re: Telegram: Voice Chats 2.0:Channels, Millions of Listeners, Recorded Chats
#109Telegram still missing message reactions. Kind of surprising at this point with the speed at which they pump out features.
This is the kind of feature that can burn servers :) Especially at telegram scale
It's interesting to me that of all companies, Facebook has not added reactions to WhatsApp, but Signal has them. I would have thought the roles to be reversed.