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Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

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Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#101

Post by kruczek »

reacharavindh wrote: post #80
nextstep wrote: post #8

Please, please, please use Signal instead. And tell your friends! Telegram has made very dubious privacy claims, but even if you trust the company, Signal has a far superior user experience. Telegram’s private messages are not enabled by default, and when you are using private messaging, numerous other features are disabled defeating the point.

I mean, say Telegram is bad, but don't hype up Signal as the pariah to this peril. It is open source in the sense that you can read the source of the project, but can't really build it and use it for yourselves or verify the build you get via the App Store is the same as open source project. Practically open source as a marketing strategy. Secondly, it needs a phone number all the time to use, which ties in with pers…

> Secondly, it needs a phone number all the time to use, which ties in with personal identity. Why? A better alternative would be a project that allows someone to choose a username and be done with it! Like HN!

Thousand times this! And it is actually a problem both with Signal and Telegram. In the latter case, I managed to avoid installing Telegram app on the phone, by using Android emulator and registering from that, but why forcing users to use such workarounds, instead of simply allowing to register without any ties to the telephone. I'd be willing to pay for a messenger which provides privacy and is not tied to the phone.

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#102

Post by oda »

kome wrote: post #95
h91wka wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Signal and Telegram use SMS for authN tokens, enough said. Being secure and censorship proof while relying on mobile networks just doesn't compute. Correction: or at least they used to? Now I realize that I am not completely sure.

Signal is way worse because it requires you to have the cellphone always on. With Telegram you need a phone number to sign-in and then you can forget about it, and use it just on desktop/laptop. You can set a password as a 2 factor authentication (1st: sms or code to another telegram client 2nd: password).

> Signal is way worse because it requires you to have the cellphone always on.

Bullcrap. Signal works fine on data alone. I have Tasker automatically turn on airplane mode when I'm on WiFi and it's never caused me to miss a Signal message.

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#103

Post by rvnx »

GranPC wrote: post #60
botto wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the same as saying that a car model is safe because there have not been any crashes yet with this make and model. No cars are safe because there are industry standards that a manufacturer is tested to ensure they are following. Closed source (both in code and implementation) has no place in the security world and anything security related should always be open for anyone to scrutinize.

Feel free to scrutinize Telegram's crypto and E2E implementation for secret chats. It's open source and you can find it here: https://github.com/tdlib/td

Yep, did it, not going to use Telegram now.

Love the unsecure TLRPC objects deserialization that actually makes the native client crash and to not verify what other clients have sent: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DrKLO/Telegram/e397bd9afdf...

and the tons of magic and undocumented numbers in the code: https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/...

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#104

Post by runn1ng »

j16sdiz wrote: post #50
teekert wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The user experience of Telegram is by far the best of all apps with the sleekest ui's and the native (electron) apps for all platforms. Moreover because of the lack of e2e encryption (on standard chat) all your messages are just there when you log in and are easily searchable. Telegram also has very nice channels and some excellent bots and a very nice feature to send yourself stuff you want accessible anywhere... Bu…

It is Qt-based, not electron

At least on Mac, Telegram has mysteriously two apps in Mac App Store, one is Electron and one is native. I never know which is which

One is named "Telegram" and one is "Telegram for Desktop" and they have exactly the same icon, but different sets of features.

edit: I was wrong, neither of the two is Electron, see below

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#105

Post by kochthesecond »

simias wrote: post #21
nextstep wrote: post #8

Please, please, please use Signal instead. And tell your friends! Telegram has made very dubious privacy claims, but even if you trust the company, Signal has a far superior user experience. Telegram’s private messages are not enabled by default, and when you are using private messaging, numerous other features are disabled defeating the point.

I've never used Telegram but I do use Signal daily and if it really offers a "far superior experience" then Telegram must be akin to connecting to an IRC server with telnet as a client. Seriously though, Signal's UI is pretty terrible and they go out of their way to discourage third party clients. It's fine as a replacement for SMS (the way I use it) but if you're used to more fully featured web messengers it's a pre…

Feature wise I feel Signal has all the stuff I want in a messenger now. I use it on many different platforms and still experience a few too many bugs. I report them, but it breaks in subtle ways that are hard to reproduce.

I think Telegram still has a better user experience.

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#106

Post by kuhhk »

supernes wrote: post #34

I cannot understand why people insist on hating Telegram for their choice of tradeoff between convenience and privacy. People who care enough about the subject should know when and whether to use it for their communications. For everyone else, it's an outstanding alternative to Messenger/WhatsApp and Viber. Edit: I'd also like to add that maybe we need to make a distinction between the notions of privacy and secrecy.…

> I cannot understand why people insist on hating Telegram for their choice of tradeoff between convenience and privacy.

I recall the anger is not about any trade off. It is that they rolled their own poor crypto instead of using battle-tested crypto. There’s no convenience factor or trade off here, they just literally did the thing the textbooks tell you not to do, and have ignored the industry’s calls to use strong crypto.

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#107

Post by empthought »

rvnx wrote: post #103
GranPC wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to scrutinize Telegram's crypto and E2E implementation for secret chats. It's open source and you can find it here: https://github.com/tdlib/td

Yep, did it, not going to use Telegram now. Love the unsecure TLRPC objects deserialization that actually makes the native client crash and to not verify what other clients have sent: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DrKLO/Telegram/e397bd9afdf... and the tons of magic and undocumented numbers in the code: https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram/blob/master/TMessagesProj/...

Crashing in the face of invalid and likely malicious input is a secure approach (fail fast).

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#108

Post by lavezzi »

purerandomness wrote: post #16
nextstep wrote: post #8

Please, please, please use Signal instead. And tell your friends! Telegram has made very dubious privacy claims, but even if you trust the company, Signal has a far superior user experience. Telegram’s private messages are not enabled by default, and when you are using private messaging, numerous other features are disabled defeating the point.

Telegram is used primarily as a replacement for Facebook Groups, not for one-to-one communication. Signal doesn't offer Groups, so it's not something people will switch to. (Signal has Group Chats however, which is something completely different)

>Telegram is used primarily as a replacement for Facebook Groups, not for one-to-one communication.

That's simply not true. People using it for group chat is a much more recent turn of events.

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#109

Post by [deleted] »

kuhhk wrote: post #106
supernes wrote: post #34

I cannot understand why people insist on hating Telegram for their choice of tradeoff between convenience and privacy. People who care enough about the subject should know when and whether to use it for their communications. For everyone else, it's an outstanding alternative to Messenger/WhatsApp and Viber. Edit: I'd also like to add that maybe we need to make a distinction between the notions of privacy and secrecy.…

> I cannot understand why people insist on hating Telegram for their choice of tradeoff between convenience and privacy. I recall the anger is not about any trade off. It is that they rolled their own poor crypto instead of using battle-tested crypto. There’s no convenience factor or trade off here, they just literally did the thing the textbooks tell you not to do, and have ignored the industry’s calls to use strong…

[deleted]

Re: Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

#110

Post by robjan »

renholder wrote: post #49
fvjft wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience Telegram has an outage every couple of months, while WhatsApp only drops dead once a year or so.

Since we're talking personal experience, Signal has never had an outage (that I was aware of).

In my experience, signal doesn't have reliable push notifications and sometimes takes a while to deliver group messages. Sometimes my friends send me messages on WhatsApp asking me to check Signal and the message hasn't arrived yet. I do prefer signal though because there is less chance that one of my contacts has backed up our conversation to Google Drive.
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