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

191–200 of 234 posts

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

#191

Post by zelphirkalt »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #176
AnonC wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! Any reason? I’ll give you some serious ones. Signal sucks really bad on user experience and features. If you try both for a week or two and learn about the features, you’d be able to conclude the same. Signal does not care about users and prevents backups on iOS. Lose your device or delete the app due to some issues and reinstall? A…

Signal operates on the idea that anything sent through chat is ephemeral and not worth keeping, which just doesn’t work in practice in my experience. When you’re knee deep in conversation with someone you’re probably not going to say, “oh hey we should switch to email so we can keep a record of this”. It might not even occur to you that the conversation could ever be of value. There’s been several occasions when my l…

> Signal operates on the idea that anything sent through chat is ephemeral and not worth keeping, which just doesn’t work in practice in my experience.

Why do you think that? Did you lose any messages? 'cause I can scroll back months and still see all my messages there. Never noticed any loss.

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

#192

Post by zelphirkalt »

AnonC wrote: post #167
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 seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! Any reason? I’ll give you some serious ones. Signal sucks really bad on user experience and features. If you try both for a week or two and learn about the features, you’d be able to conclude the same. Signal does not care about users and prevents backups on iOS. Lose your device or delete the app due to some issues and reinstall? A…

> Signal sucks really bad on user experience and features. If you try both for a week or two and learn about the features, you’d be able to conclude the same.

Hm, for me Signal does all I need: Chat, voice chat, video chat, group chat, sending text, pictures, videos, whatever. All of that of course encrypted and not financed by a Russian millionaire/billionaire.

> Signal still has message delivery issues (like long delays)…it’s 2022!!!

Haven't noticed those. How sure are you, that your contacts are actually looking at Signal messages (two filled cirles checkmarks) or have network to receive the messages (two unfilled circles checkmarks)?

> Signal keeps pestering me to allow notifications and to allow contacts access. I can only choose “Not Now”, since there is no option that says “No”. When I choose “Not Now”, it will say “we’ll remind you later” and pester me again. I don’t understand why anyone would assume that this app cares about privacy or about users’ time.

OK, that's really annoying then. I usually use Signal on my computer, from which it works very nicely and never asks me any of those things.

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

#193

Post by GekkePrutser »

smarx007 wrote: post #61
martin_a wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Signal forbids alternate clients Which might be due to their E2E encryption?!?

No, it's a management decision and not a technical limitation.

It was mainly moxie who was hell-bent against that though. I'm hoping they'll reverse their stance since he left. And on federation as well.

Moxie was against all these things because it would make new features more difficult to implement. But personally I care much more for an open infrastructure. Most of their new features weren't even useful.

I'm currently using a matrix bridge and I didn't get banned (officially that's a third party client too) so that's a good sign.

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

#194

Post by kitsunesoba »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #191
kitsunesoba wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal operates on the idea that anything sent through chat is ephemeral and not worth keeping, which just doesn’t work in practice in my experience. When you’re knee deep in conversation with someone you’re probably not going to say, “oh hey we should switch to email so we can keep a record of this”. It might not even occur to you that the conversation could ever be of value. There’s been several occasions when my l…

> Signal operates on the idea that anything sent through chat is ephemeral and not worth keeping, which just doesn’t work in practice in my experience. Why do you think that? Did you lose any messages? 'cause I can scroll back months and still see all my messages there. Never noticed any loss.

As mentioned in parent comment:

> Signal does not care about users and prevents backups on iOS. Lose your device or delete the app due to some issues and reinstall? All your chats are gone!

Switching out devices is something that happens often enough for many users that transferring history should not be an ordeal. Even the most careful users will occasionally break their phones, and sometimes people need to switch platforms for whatever reason.

WhatsApp suffers from this issue too, at least when trying to migrate histories between platforms.

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

#195

Post by GekkePrutser »

eikaramba wrote: post #65

Current stats as of 30.08.22 14:22 are (1,166,650 votes): 41% OPTION 1: No changes. Telegram may continue to share IP addresses and phone numbers of terror suspects only based on a court decision 21% OPTION 2: Upon request by German police authorities, Telegram may disclose IP addresses and phone numbers of suspects of serious crimes, even if not supported by a court decision. 34% OPTION 3: Under no circumstances may…

That's too bad. I was hoping Germans would massively vote option 3. They are a privacy conscious people after all. And that option would bring it in line with Signal (with the unfortunate difference that not all chats are encrypted by default)

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

#196

Post by zelphirkalt »

em-bee wrote: post #83
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 seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! telegram is the only chat app that offers Free Software clients, does not force me to share my phonenumber, is easy enough to use even for old people. matrix is ok. but element is still buggy and the ux is complex and takes some learning. another alternative is deltachat. it uses smtp as transport and works with an email account. the…

Last time I tried Telegram to see what it is like, it did automatically broadcast to all my contacts, that I use Telegram, and as a consequence people thought they could message me there, even though I was only testing the app. Also it did require associating with my phone/SIM. Do you mean, that it does not publish your phone number to other people on Telegram?

I keep an eye on deltachat, hoping, that it might become a viable alternative to phone number associated chat solutions. Not sure how mature deltachat is already.

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

#197

Post by zelphirkalt »

Canada wrote: post #165
upofadown wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How about not storing any information at all? That wouldn't work for groups. Abusers could then destroy the groups with impunity for the purpose of censorship. Telegram is mostly about groups. Telegram is often used for activism. Signal claims to not store data about who is talking to who. That doesn't mean that they don't. If they were, say, a secret subsidiary of the CIA they would act exactly as they are acting n…

The signal code is public and has been widely reviewed. We know full well what the server knows regardless of what they say.

That is at least an indication, but unfortunately not a proof. They could run modified versions on their servers, if they wanted.

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

#198

Post by GekkePrutser »

atemerev wrote: post #89

Telegram is not a privacy-focused messenger. It is not a messenger at all, it is a dialog-based development platform, like WeChat. Most of its value is in public channels and groups, and bots. It is dead simple to build a useful Telegram bot; good luck doing this on Signal. Wire and Threema are serious privacy-focused messengers. They have all things necessary for good privacy: full E2E, pseudonymous IDs not linked t…

> It is dead simple to build a useful Telegram bot; good luck doing this on Signal.

Well, obviously because Telegram officially allows and supports bots and WhatsApp doesn't and actively tries to ban them.

Thats more of a policy difference than a technical or conceptual difference IMO.

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

#200

Post by zelphirkalt »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #195
eikaramba wrote: post #65

Current stats as of 30.08.22 14:22 are (1,166,650 votes): 41% OPTION 1: No changes. Telegram may continue to share IP addresses and phone numbers of terror suspects only based on a court decision 21% OPTION 2: Upon request by German police authorities, Telegram may disclose IP addresses and phone numbers of suspects of serious crimes, even if not supported by a court decision. 34% OPTION 3: Under no circumstances may…

That's too bad. I was hoping Germans would massively vote option 3. They are a privacy conscious people after all. And that option would bring it in line with Signal (with the unfortunate difference that not all chats are encrypted by default)

> They are a privacy conscious people after all.

No, sorry, we are not. Not by a long shot. Most people here do not have a good understanding of these issues and "just want to live their life", meaning continue to be uninformed, as long as it is convenient.

It is quite difficult to even get people to try Signal or other option, to really give it a chance, because they are so prone to the network effect. They install all kinds of shit apps on their phones, but one more privacy friendly chat app? Nahhhh ...

Post reply on HN