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After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users

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Re: After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users

#101

Post by Grimburger »

shapefrog wrote: post #68

How many times does it have to be said - Companies are not immune to court orders, CEOs wont do 10 years hard time so that your phone number or ip address or even unencrypted content isnt handed over in a police investigation in return for $5.99 a month.

> CEOs wont do 10 years hard time

They can knowingly launder billions of dollars for drug dealers plus terrorists and not even face a day in jail, comments like this make me chuckle.

The only "CEO"s facing jail are the people with 100 employees who shouldn't even have the title in the first place.

Re: After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users

#102

Post by wallaBBB »

Normille wrote: post #39
Markoff wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but in that case you can just go with Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger with WA being at least E2E by default, no point even trying some "alternatives" as Signal or Telegram under pretense of security. With Telegram I can see at least appeal in using it as news source, chat room or for bots, but what offers Signal besides hype about The Current Thing? Signal uses centralized server with closed source (they hidden…

>With Telegram I can see at least appeal in using it as news source, chat room or for bots, but what offers Signal besides hype about The Current Thing?... I use Telegram as a less 'facebooky' alternative to WhatsApp. Most of my friends and all my family are on it and, as a convenient messenger, it has a lot going for it; fast, 100% reliable sync across all my devices, generous file transfers, ability to quickly ping…

With the amount of fake news being pushed through Telegram groups that are public, Telegram is by far more Facebooky than WhatsApp. Ukrainian war disinformation and crypto scams being a good example of Facebookiness on Telegram.

Re: After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users

#103

Post by cl3misch »

baxtr wrote: post #45
ls15 wrote: post #2

Don't use messengers that ask for your phone number and aren't end-to-end encrypted. Use services that store as little data as possible. If data is stored, it can be given away and I would assume that it will be given away. Telegram disguises itself as encrypted chat app, when it is actually just a regular centralized plaintext messenger that has an encryption feature that nobody uses.

Which ones don't ask for a phone number?

"Session": it's a Signal fork which uses Tor

Re: After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users

#104

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

XorNot wrote: post #56
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes. yes yes. yes. yes 100%. the same reason i avoid whatsapp and signal like the plague. "mobile number" is in itself a big identifier when you are living in a place where you have o do mandatory KYC so that the government knows which each mobile number is linked to the actual human being. i dont care signal doesnt hold any messages. the government can ask for my number and they can use the xkcd spanner method to do…

This is silly. You adopt practice based on your threat model. Threat models presuming the government can just torture information out of you also mean that any system will give you away - you're either completely anonymous or not, but if you use a messenger of any kind from your home internet IP address, then they'll come pick you up. Telecom companies have full records of who had what IP, for what duration and when…

people regularly use VPNs and today,in 2022, that is no longer a fringe action. NORMAL people now use VPNs to bypass geo restrictions.

signal to noise ratio of people using VPNs removes the linking user device to an account to a good extent.

now, in the existing model, whatever method you use, your number is STILL a PII, in whatsapp or signal or whatever.

>then so will anything else.

100% agree but you whatever counter measures you take, your number is still available in whatsapp/signal so there is NO way to prevent that. IF these two did not have the number, then that would indeed be better but not until then

Re: After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users

#105

Post by codedokode »

cpach wrote: post #71
codedokode wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal requires a phone number which is linked to identity and precise location.

True. That does not affect the message integrity and message confidentiality though. So let me ask you this: What’s your threat model? Does your threat model require you to hide your location from the Five Eyes?

In my opinion "secure messenger" should protect from any actor. If we start making exceptions then it cannot be called secure anymore.

Signal requires extra information that is not necessary for exchanging messages. That is at least suspicious. If you are fine with giving away your number you can just use WhatsApp or Telegram.

Re: After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users

#106

Post by codedokode »

shapefrog wrote: post #80
codedokode wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal requires a phone number which is linked to identity and precise location.

> which is linked to identity and precise location I live in a country with strict KYC on phone numbers - my signal account uses a phone number from a different country in the world, not associated with any person in a country I have never been to and activated in a very odd location once only before being destroyed. If you actually care about security / privacy to the extent of hiding from state actors then it is tr…

> activated in a very odd location once only before being destroyed.

Phone numbers are recycled so eventually it will become someone else's phone number unless you continue paying for it.

Re: After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users

#107

Post by Markoff »

shapefrog wrote: post #80
codedokode wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal requires a phone number which is linked to identity and precise location.

> which is linked to identity and precise location I live in a country with strict KYC on phone numbers - my signal account uses a phone number from a different country in the world, not associated with any person in a country I have never been to and activated in a very odd location once only before being destroyed. If you actually care about security / privacy to the extent of hiding from state actors then it is tr…

I hope you bought your phone with cash in that case, since even without providing phone number it's easily indentifiable in network back to you even without SIM card through IMEI when registering to network.

Re: After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users

#108

Post by ls15 »

twelve40 wrote: post #89
ls15 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Network effects" is an euphemism for "peer pressure" .

so you like to run around and force all your contacts onto a new better messenger du jour? Messaging is by definition a social activity, so unless you sever most connections and just message yourself, you do end up using whatsapp, telegram, shit some of my family still uses skype! so all this well-meaning advice "just use..." is ridiculous in practice.

This fragmentation of the communication space is the problem that the new EU regulation for messenger interoperability tries to attack. I agree with this idea and also with the idea to make it mandatory only for platforms above a certain size.

To me it makes sense. We had centuries where people could send a letter from one country to another country, both with their own postal services. Why can't we send a message from iMessage to Whatsapp without installing another company's spyware?

However, I do not agree at all with the EU's plans for Chat Control.

Re: After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users

#109

Post by antisocialist »

Telegram is convenient, the bot feature's great. But some things about it suck and they're prone to government interference privacy-wise.

One of the more recent E2EE private messaging apps with metadata shredding and no registration requirement for is https://xx.network/messenger

It's available for Android & iOS.

F-Droid users can build Android version from the source (https://git.xx.network/elixxir/) and load it themselves.

There's no registration and the app doesn't collect your phone number, device ID and similar crap. Is it mature and polished? No, it has its quirks and rough corners. But it won't let you down on security and encryption.

Re: After Delhi High Court ruling, Telegram discloses personal details of users

#110

Post by leetnewb »

Grimburger wrote: post #98
Semaphor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jabber/XMPP, Matrix are the obvious answers.

I'll get my mum right onto it

In all fairness, I got my entire non-technical family onto xmpp/jabber with Snikket (which is a highly opinionated packaging of existing xmpp server and clients with minor tweaks). They scan a QR code to download the app and join the server. It is e2ee out of the box and the experience is quite comfortable and seamless, even for a non-technical person.
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