Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 234 posts

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#41

Post by dgellow »

funnym0nk3y wrote: post #29
traspler wrote: post #4

Is there anything special going on in Germany atm to prompt this? I‘m slighlty confused why they would do such a poll…

Telegram is considered a platform for people, which do not respect the basic values of democracy like groups far right expressing xenophobia and groups which think (and express loudly) of the COVID measures as repression by some elite against the common citizen. Most of them whish for a autoritarian government. Groups which act against the constitution are observed by the Verfassungsschutz, an authority to protect th…

The „funny“ thing is that they discuss anti-democratic topics in public, open groups and channels. They are for the vast majority completely technologically illiterate and somehow associate Telegram with secrecy. But they are in fact publicly broadcasting their wishes to reverse authorities. Any investigators can just join a group and see almost everything they are planning out loud.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#42

Post by matkoniecz »

izzytcp wrote: post #3

Hi, German here. How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal. I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. App should be dead already or turned into a dating app because it’s clearly not seriously privacy fucused.

UX of Signal is terrible. Part of that is a direct result of security-usability trade-offs.

> The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info.

I am using it for public chats.

--------------------

EDIT: this is inacurate, see replies

For example I get repeated "insert PIN password here to remember it".

I have a password manager. There is no way to get rid of it, even via deeply hidden settings. For example, what about disabling it for password with length over 40? Or something?

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#43

Post by edsimpson »

isaacfrond wrote: post #9
izzytcp wrote: post #3

Hi, German here. How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal. I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. App should be dead already or turned into a dating app because it’s clearly not seriously privacy fucused.

I switched from signal to Telegram because the iphone version was buggy as hell. That's why.

Signal bugs on ios really are a pain point for people that I have convinced to switch. Even basic things, the ios app does not seem to use the correct camera API which makes using the internal camera lower quality which also makes video calls blurry.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/5294

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#44

Post by bowsamic »

neverrroot wrote: post #7
traspler wrote: post #4

Is there anything special going on in Germany atm to prompt this? I‘m slighlty confused why they would do such a poll…

Yes, a lot of pressure from the leftist government. Many channels opposing the German Covid policy (one of a kind in Europe, very strict) are to be found in Telegram. As always, there is also some German right in Telegram. The government is officially after them, but the media/government has been painting all those opposing the Covid measures as right, so… it’s tricky.

> (one of a kind in Europe, very strict)

This is wrong. The German COVID policy is not strict at all. There is a 5 day isolation if you test positive, and you usually have to wear a mask on public transport. That's literally it.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#45

Post by neverrroot »

funnym0nk3y wrote: post #29
traspler wrote: post #4

Is there anything special going on in Germany atm to prompt this? I‘m slighlty confused why they would do such a poll…

Telegram is considered a platform for people, which do not respect the basic values of democracy like groups far right expressing xenophobia and groups which think (and express loudly) of the COVID measures as repression by some elite against the common citizen. Most of them whish for a autoritarian government. Groups which act against the constitution are observed by the Verfassungsschutz, an authority to protect th…

On the surface you are correct, this is especially the painted picture by the mass media and at least partially by the government (who also sought banning Telegram entirely in Germany). If you go deeper, you get to see that also a lot of human rights activists and NGOs are using it. Have been using Telegram since 2015, and in the meantime, most of my IT buddies use it and/or Signal.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#46

Post by rvz »

izzytcp wrote: post #3

Hi, German here. How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal. I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. App should be dead already or turned into a dating app because it’s clearly not seriously privacy fucused.

> How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal.

Yeah, give S̶i̶g̶n̶a̶l̶ Twilio your phone number instead. Problem solved.

> I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. App should be dead already or turned into a dating app because it’s clearly not seriously privacy fucused.

They don't care and Signal offers less that what Telegram has despite Telegram being less secure. Signal is bad at selling itself.

Maybe Signal needs to offer a better user experience, backup chats across all devices and offer more useful features; not less than their competitors rather than pushing a private cryptocurrency scam project useful for criminals, scammers and money launderers.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#47

Post by j16sdiz »

londons_explore wrote: post #36
detaro wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would any court or government care about Telegram/Reddit saying that?

Well they would redesign systems so that they don't have any visibility into message or channel contents, and if they are notified of a channel with bad content, they would just say 'contact the moderator of the channel'. Rather like ISP's today aren't responsible for the web pages they deliver - the HTTPS encryption means they couldn't scan or block them even if they wanted to.

But then they will make it illegal to provide these services and jail the telegram team instead.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#48

Post by j16sdiz »

mtmail wrote: post #28
dgellow wrote: post #21

Can others confirm? I’m a Telegram user, located in Germany, with a German phone number and didn’t receive such a message.

I can confirm. After selecting an answer the poll even shows percentages.

What's the percentage now?

Not German, but still want to know

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#49

Post by durkie »

matkoniecz wrote: post #42
izzytcp wrote: post #3

Hi, German here. How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal. I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. App should be dead already or turned into a dating app because it’s clearly not seriously privacy fucused.

UX of Signal is terrible. Part of that is a direct result of security-usability trade-offs. > The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. I am using it for public chats. -------------------- EDIT: this is inacurate, see replies For example I get repeated "insert PIN password here to remember it". I have a password manager. There is no way to get rid of it, even via d…

I have a "pin reminders" setting in iOS signal that I can turn off. It's in Settings > Account

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#50

Post by afiori »

bloqs wrote: post #26
izzytcp wrote: post #3

Hi, German here. How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal. I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. App should be dead already or turned into a dating app because it’s clearly not seriously privacy fucused.

Telegram seems to have captured some of thr discord market and seems to do "group" stuff a lot better UX wise.

To effectively capture discord usage telegram should add Group groups, that is to allow user to create an Organizations with some channels and groups.

Also some kind of shared access policy.

Could even be a pro feature.

Post reply on HN