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Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

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Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#21

Post by orangepurple »

sgjohnson wrote: post #3

It doesn't actually even matter if they did this. The only thing that matters is that they are physically capable of doing so. Telegram is not e2e encrypted by default, and therefore you shouldn't use it if you're concerned about privacy. Look no further than Signal's supboenas and how they respond to them. With all the information they hold about an account. Which is just the creation date and last connection date.…

Terrible advice. If you want e2e you can choose to enable it. It is not enabled because many users choose to receive their messages across multiple personal devices simultaneously. This is not possible with e2e, which is why it is an option.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#22

Post by soziawa »

sgjohnson wrote: post #3

It doesn't actually even matter if they did this. The only thing that matters is that they are physically capable of doing so. Telegram is not e2e encrypted by default, and therefore you shouldn't use it if you're concerned about privacy. Look no further than Signal's supboenas and how they respond to them. With all the information they hold about an account. Which is just the creation date and last connection date.…

> Look no further than Signal's supboenas and how they respond to them. With all the information they hold about an account. Which is just the creation date and last connection date. https://signal.org/bigbrother/eastern-virginia-grand-jury/

Signal's subpoenas have always left a sour taste in my mouth. I just can't believe that they are getting so few, at least some cases they'll just send the standard letter out and will try to get something. Having no list of how many they have rejected would at least increase my confidence in them a bit.

But the bigger issue is, that they data they provide is just too good to be true for the majority of users. Signal has a push token for the vast majority of accounts otherwise they wouldn't be able to send out push notifications on iOS and would waste at least some battery on devices with Google Play services installed. The subpoenas always seem to affect people who have an Android phone without Google Play services installed. In my eyes is too strange of a coincidence to be true.

Signal does at least a bad job of explaining what kind of data they keep on an average user.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#24

Post by soziawa »

orangepurple wrote: post #21
sgjohnson wrote: post #3

It doesn't actually even matter if they did this. The only thing that matters is that they are physically capable of doing so. Telegram is not e2e encrypted by default, and therefore you shouldn't use it if you're concerned about privacy. Look no further than Signal's supboenas and how they respond to them. With all the information they hold about an account. Which is just the creation date and last connection date.…

Terrible advice. If you want e2e you can choose to enable it. It is not enabled because many users choose to receive their messages across multiple personal devices simultaneously. This is not possible with e2e, which is why it is an option.

> Terrible advice. If you want e2e you can choose to enable it. It is not enabled because many users choose to receive their messages across multiple personal devices simultaneously. This is not possible with e2e, which is why it is an option.

Signal, WhatsApp, iMessage and Threema seem to do just fine.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#25

Post by andyjohnson0 »

sgjohnson wrote: post #3

It doesn't actually even matter if they did this. The only thing that matters is that they are physically capable of doing so. Telegram is not e2e encrypted by default, and therefore you shouldn't use it if you're concerned about privacy. Look no further than Signal's supboenas and how they respond to them. With all the information they hold about an account. Which is just the creation date and last connection date.…

It is particularly amusing that they provided the two date/time pairs in the form of "Unix millis" only. Obviously there's the legal risk of getting the conversion to Gregorian wrong, but I suspect that may have cause some head-scratching at the court.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#26

Post by differentView »

krono wrote: post #11
differentView wrote: post #4

>"To this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments." A very specific way of saying what most would assume means their users' data is safe. Even if it's not an outright lie, allowing government agents to view user data in their office would not contradict their statement.

What is your definition of "disclosed"? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disclosed

If a government agent asks for certain user data, a Telegram employee does a search and have it on their screen for the government agent to see. How many bytes would you say Telegram has disclosed?

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#27

Post by oezi »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #23

People use Telegram because they have a great user experience. Signal, unfortunately, does not - and it's not entirely because they're limited by E2EE.

Having switched my family, friends and many colleagues to Signal, I am fairly confident to say that Signal's user experience is good enough.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#28

Post by krono »

differentView wrote: post #26
krono wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your definition of "disclosed"? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disclosed

If a government agent asks for certain user data, a Telegram employee does a search and have it on their screen for the government agent to see. How many bytes would you say Telegram has disclosed?

The exact number of bytes I wouldn't know, but they would certainly have disclosed all the information that was rendered on screen at that moment.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#29

Post by namlem »

hunglee2 wrote: post #8

We either accept countries are sovereign over tech companies or not. If tech companies operate with the territory of a country or provide services to citizens in that country, we can expect that they would have to do so under the laws of that land. Those tech companies can choose to withdraw services if they have a problem with doing so. Twitter / FB et al withdrew from the Chinese market (they were not banned by the…

Not necessarily. If a company doesn't engage in commerce then it can be based in one country and provide services in other countries regardless of their laws, so long as their home country is willing to resist attempts by other countries to prosecute them.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#30

Post by sgjohnson »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #25
sgjohnson wrote: post #3

It doesn't actually even matter if they did this. The only thing that matters is that they are physically capable of doing so. Telegram is not e2e encrypted by default, and therefore you shouldn't use it if you're concerned about privacy. Look no further than Signal's supboenas and how they respond to them. With all the information they hold about an account. Which is just the creation date and last connection date.…

It is particularly amusing that they provided the two date/time pairs in the form of "Unix millis" only. Obviously there's the legal risk of getting the conversion to Gregorian wrong, but I suspect that may have cause some head-scratching at the court.

It's probably some malicious compliance on their part. They are probably storing those timestamps, as, well, UNIX timestamps. So it's exactly what they provide.
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