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Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

androidpolice.com

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Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#51

Post by AnonHP »

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.

Signal does have an inferior experience. Signal has many UX issues, including the lack of a backup mechanism for iOS (if you lose your device or have to reset it, there is no way to restore old chats, and that’s by design). Additional irritants that nobody in the development team has thought about for years:

* I decline Signal’s prompt to turn on notifications with the “Not now” button (there is no “No thanks” button). It responds with “We’ll remind you later” and nags me again in a few days.

* I decline Signal’s prompt to share my contacts with it using the “Not now” button (there is no “No thanks” button). It responds with “We’ll remind you later” and nags me again in a few days.

Signal may be good at security, but whoever designed the app has no respect for users’ time, and it doesn’t seem like they respect a user’s privacy choices either. Telegram, on the other hand, does not have E2EE chats by default, but the privacy features are far ahead.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#52

Post by Ansil849 »

An advantage of Telegram over Signal or related apps is that if I am in a situation where I need to delete a message and leave no trace of it having been there then I can do this on Telegram. On Signal, if I delete a message it leaves a 'this message has been deleted' (or something to that effect) notification in the logs of the other party, which can be extremely undesirable behavior.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#53

Post by jmknoll »

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.…

If the capability exists, it will be exploited sooner or later.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#54

Post by tintedfireglass »

pards wrote: post #9
encryptluks2 wrote: post #2

I love Telegram, but it is one of those apps that since it requires a phone number I don't really trust them with ultra-secret data. I think their E2E protocol is fairly sound, but even that isn't ideal. I think you may also get some minimum benefit by using the open-source Android app vs the Google Play Store app. Regardless, if you really desire secrecy (and I believe in privacy but would never advocate for serious…

Signal also requires a phone number, IIRC

If you want signal without using a phone number, you can use a fork of signal called Session(https://getsession.org/). That's the power of opensource :)

I feel that the average person would be inclined to use signal more if it required a phone number than otherwise.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#57

Post by rvz »

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.…

> 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/

It doesn't matter. The problem with Signal is that it is vulnerable to being shutdown easily.

So Google or Amazon or where ever Signal is hosted can just shut it down and will receive a request by the authorities to show that it is aiding and facilitating in illegal activities and will blame it on the tons of criminal networks, terrorists, insurrectionists and gangs all using Signal.

Thus, Signal really is a centralized dead end in the long run. Anything that is decentralized or allows self-hosting is the way to go.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#58

Post by pessimizer »

tpoacher wrote: post #42

Quoted post unavailable.

"Reportedly" means that they've had a report (from Der Spiegel, who claims sources in the German police.) What you're doing here is simply lying. What it seems you want journalists to do is to report what they've heard as truth, and to disguise their sources.

Or are you saying that Der Spiegel isn't a legitimate source and shouldn't be reported on? It's unintelligible.

Re: Telegram reportedly surrendered user data to authorities

#59

Post by pkulak »

vetinari wrote: post #39
soziawa wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"Just fine" by conveniently managing the keys for you. You have no idea what they really do with them. Well, except Threema. Last time I used it, it was not possible to receive their messages across multiple devices simultaneously.

You have no idea what any software does with your keys unless you audit it, then compile and install it on your device yourself. Oh, and audit your compiler. And its compiler...
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