Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by Dolores12 » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 1:31 PM UTC

botto wrote: post #51

ymolodtsov wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still haven't seen any examples of Telegram being compromised.

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.

RSA encryption is potentially exploitable by quantum computing. Still people are using it everywhere.

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

#122

Post by Frondo » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

patcon wrote: post #117

Frondo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used Signal, Telegram, and Whatsapp heavily (friends on all three, natch), here's my one absolutely critical beef with Signal: It doesn't always deliver messages, and it more frequently doesn't deliver them in a timely fashion. In my experience, Signal delays delivery of messages about 5% of the time -- which is actually huge and makes it unusable for reliable chats. The story which made me never trust Signal…

> Telegram, on the other hand, has been absolutely reliable, both in regular and secure chats. Never a lost message, never a delayed message. > Same for Whatsapp. what's disturbing to me (from a relatively naive perspective -- I'm familiar with terms like PSTN and MVNO and the general system, but I havn't worked in telecom): you've described what would be exactly how a nation state would kill a superior and more secu…

State actors have a much more direct route to killing secure chats like Telegram and Signal: they firewall the servers at the national level.

There've been several state actors that have done this to both Telegram and Signal already -- both of these apps employ different ways of avoiding it but this is already one of the arms races in the world of secure chats.

FWIW, my problems with Signal losing/delaying messages are all US-based, which AFAIK has never been accused of doing any sort of state-level firewalling of secure chat apps.

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

#123

Post by chewz » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

tome wrote: post #115

Sendotsh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wire is definitely my favourite of the secure IMs as far as UI/UX. It's also the one I've had most luck with when referring non-tech family and friends. They didn't like Signal or Riot (for a variety of reasons) but are happy to use Wire.

It looks like you have to pay for Wire. Is that right?

Free for personal account, paid for commercial use. Discounts for edu and NGO.

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

#124

Post by tuco86 » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 1:40 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #114

roel_v wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having just installed Signal yesterday, in what respect is it worse than Whatsapp (from a UI pov)? The only thing I found so far is the bad integration with contacts.

Having used Signal, Telegram, and Whatsapp heavily (friends on all three, natch), here's my one absolutely critical beef with Signal: It doesn't always deliver messages, and it more frequently doesn't deliver them in a timely fashion. In my experience, Signal delays delivery of messages about 5% of the time -- which is actually huge and makes it unusable for reliable chats. The story which made me never trust Signal…

I personally put most trust in signal. But i have had reliability issues with all of my (few) signal contacts.

Reliability trumps security for near 100% of usecases.

As a side note: We switched form slack to teams which has features no end but chat is't reliable as well.

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

#125

Post by s_dev » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 1:41 PM UTC

mgw wrote: post #15

I understand Telegram's appeal because of its high quality apps and big feature list, but articles such as this one really should be more nuanced when pushing Telegram's marketing message of "We have true privacy and unlimited space for everyone.". Their default mode is not end-to-end encrypted [1] and as such the product is less private than WhatsApp. Even tech-savvy users in my social circles are not aware of this…

>Secret chats are meant for people who want more secrecy than the average fella. All messages in secret chats use end-to-end encryption.

Seems fair to me -- some people do want some archive of their conversations but the option to limit the storage duration of those conversations. Secret chat is a heavily promoted feature -- it's not some hidden mode just because it's not the deafult.

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

#126

Post by Flat-tone » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #93

emerongi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which features are missing? I text and call through Signal and I've not felt like there is anything missing. For a while they didn't have support for front-facing cameras, but that was added some time in the last year. Only other problem I've had is that on some Android phones the "voicemail" feature (or w/e it's called) wasn't working well, but not sure if it's still a thing.

The desktop app is electron junk that lacks basic features like changing spellchecking language and there's no pure web client like Whatsapp for instance. I also think it lacks some features of the mobile client like creating new groups and adding new contacts (or at least I haven't figured out how to do it). When I install the client on a new computer I can't access the history of the messages from the phone for a r…

I agree that the desktop app is much worse than the mobile client.

But they've been steadily adding features to both. URL previews were recently added, for instance.

Also, I never take pictures in-app, but I just tried it and I can't reproduce your problem with the Android client: there is no cropping on my phone. Maybe an issue with your phone?

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

#127

Post by untog » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

tadzik_ wrote: post #82

ta2223332221 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Open source" means the SOURCE CODE is OPEN. Which it is. The internet is full of half-baked "secure" and "private" chat clients and servers. Security is hard to get right. I'm guessing they don't want the reputation of Signal muddled up with some other random client. IIUC anyone can run their own network, and make it as open as they like, using their code, they just can't call it Signal. Much like how Firefox and Re…

Sure it is: but how do you know if it really is the source code of Signal ? For all we know, both the Signal network and its client are a half-baked "secure" and "private" chat, and the source code they publish is an elaborate decoy (though probably a subset of the real underlying code, for obvious reasons).

That's surely the case with absolutely every (iOS, at least) app? I'm not sure how anyone would ever get around it.

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

#128

Post by saagarjha » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

tadzik_ wrote: post #45

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.

Please, please don't. Open Whisper Systems is a company that uses "open-source" as a marketing term while bullying the people who choose to take advantage of it. You can build your own client, but if you start to distribute it, they'll ban you from using their servers[1], with an explanation plain ridiculous for a company that took thousands of dollars from various open source foundations. The server is open source,…

Telegram is far from being "open-source", either–they reap the benefits of being associated with GPLv2 but fail to publish their code in a timely manner, and appear to be infringing on a number of third-party licenses: https://github.com/overtake/TelegramSwift/issues/163

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

#129

Post by 14 » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #114

roel_v wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having just installed Signal yesterday, in what respect is it worse than Whatsapp (from a UI pov)? The only thing I found so far is the bad integration with contacts.

Having used Signal, Telegram, and Whatsapp heavily (friends on all three, natch), here's my one absolutely critical beef with Signal: It doesn't always deliver messages, and it more frequently doesn't deliver them in a timely fashion. In my experience, Signal delays delivery of messages about 5% of the time -- which is actually huge and makes it unusable for reliable chats. The story which made me never trust Signal…

I really wish I could see this visual flare you are talking about as in if you could post some images I would buy it. I am honestly sitting here and thinking about what exactly flare might look like in a messaging app and I can’t really come up with an answer. Is it a color scheme? The layout of the buttons? Signal to me seems like many of the other messaging apps all much the same maybe slightly different in layout. I go to my messaging app to send a message. What is this flare you say is important to you? Genuine question here. Thanks

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

#130

Post by aclsid » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

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.

Let's see, Signal is based in the US. Wechat is a Chinese system with a great UX that is based in China. Telegram used to be based in Russia. Whatsapp is owned by Facebook.

I think it is pretty self-explanatory that in all these countries, governments haven't been exactly subtle when it comes to their efforts to intercept communications. In my mind, Telegram is the only software that resisted such interference in an almost heroic way and ended up having to move out of the country.