471–480 of 501 posts
There are multiple layers where interception can happen: 1) On-screen keyboard - by default most phones do send what is being typed - a lot of phones also have 3rd party keyboards of doubtful origin preinstalled 2) "Enable backup" scam - on starting an app (like Google Photos or WhatsApp) chances you or your wife accidentally press "ok" on a pop up message 3) Hardware drivers - non open source binary blobs with back…
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Good for you, you probably do not live in a country under digital colonialism where the gov allowed facebook et al to force internet providers to tax the pop with absurdly low and expensive data limits and then "not count" things like facebook and whatsapp and one music app. In most of the global south, 100% of business have a whatsapp. In those places it pretty much replaced telephone and the green whatsapp icon is…
i completely agree with your sentiment, but i will also say this. As an expat, this feature has enabled me to transact with locals from the convenience of my phone, even though i don't have any local line and i will not bother to get a local SIM card, nor do i want to have a US SIM and a local one interchangeably. It also enables me to be very effective when requesting services on demand, and cutting thru the on-hold…
Telephony is an artificial monopoly. There's not a single reason why you cannot call everyone around the globe for mostly free, as whatsapp proves. Yet here we are.
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Whom should we trust then? Have we already forgotten about Snowden?
Can we trust some more than others without trusting anyone completely? I for one trust that there are more Americans who would say no to the NSA when they have a legal basis for doing so than there are Russians saying no to the FSB. The state of the rule of law is certainly not great anywhere in the world right now. But it's far worse in some places than in others. The difference still matters to some degree.
No, we cannot, so yours and other comments come across as picking favorites. As an Eastern European I'll state that I distrust USA as much as I distrust Russia, China and North Korea. All nations with ambitions use every dirty trick known to man.
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There is more reason to be concerned about Telegram than most other similar services. Partly because it’s insecure by default, which makes a large percentage of conversations vulnerable. And also because the team behind it is very susceptible to pressure from the Russian government, which is especially bad when it comes to these things. Even if some of them are based out of Dubai now, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t…
> Even if some of them are based out of Dubai now Not to mention there's not much reason to trust UAE any more than there is to trust Russia.
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True, they aren't. Whether they're friends with Russia is another thing though.
They don't have to be friends to turn a blind eye. If Dubai had to pick between letting some nobody foreign national living on their soil get squeezed by a foreign secret police, or pissing off the Russians, what do you think they would do? (This isn't a knock on Dubai specifically, substitute them for almost any non-NATO country in the world).
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I heard. Your point?
They have a long reach and like to be brutal for effect.
Still no idea what your argument is. Or that of the grand-parent comment. "Oh look, Russia is poisoning people!" Yeah, we knew that ever since the Cold War. Show me a nation that doesn't persecute people it doesn't like.
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You say it like it's a fact, so I assume you have proof? Durov is very vocal about being in exile so this looks doubtful.
That's the tune of every Russian oligarch that doesn't want to get caught up in a sanctions regime that makes their Paris/Milan shopping trips a pain.
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Same goes for Signal devs, or any devs really. You're only stating the obvious: humans can be forced and coerced given enough motivation and resources. Singling out Telegram, or Signal, or any other service's devs is not advancing any argument forward.
There is more reason to be concerned about Telegram than most other similar services. Partly because it’s insecure by default, which makes a large percentage of conversations vulnerable. And also because the team behind it is very susceptible to pressure from the Russian government, which is especially bad when it comes to these things. Even if some of them are based out of Dubai now, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t…
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Signal is still a significant improvement in security and privacy over SMS, Telegram, Discord, X, Whatsapp... It achieved the level of privacy that solutions like PGP tried and mostly failed to achieve for decades. Being tied to a phone number was part of the convenience of their solution. Allowing for nicknames now, might improve on the metadata leakage problem slightly. I'm sure reactionists will immediately drop S…
> I'm sure reactionists will immediately drop Signal because Elon the great said they should Signal got a massive boost in popularity because "Elon the great" literally told people to "Use Signal".