Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

livelaw.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 230 posts

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

#131

Post by _8j50 »

Accacin wrote: post #57
_8j50 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, most. Like Signal for example. Even without security you can't migrate between android and iphone or have multiple devices with the same account. But they have crypto amd stories now lol.

All the hating on Signal but for me it's the best and fits my threat model. I live in the UK and by all accounts I'm pretty unremarkable - I want privacy but not overly worried about anonymity, I also wanted something that I could persuade family and friends to use. Signal works perfectly in my use case, my friends and family happily switched over to it where when I tried to help my parents set up Matrix it was super…

Signal has made the choice that their users will not be people like you or your family. No automatic backups or recovery or migration capability. They also dropped sms support. They are better than telegram for sure. I recommend using an apple device and imessage for the average person who just wants private communication and isn't concerned about targeted nation state attacks and the like. On android, session might be ok but I wouldn't know, for security I don't see what signal has that they don't and you don't need google play services to use them but i have no idea if they are even unfriendlier than signal. There are other apps that use the underlying crypyo signal uses, so it really is a feature comparison.

I regret getting friends and family to use signal.

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

#132

Post by simiones »

sfusato wrote: post #81

All of a sudden, it seems really stupid that telegram stores all their data unencrypted and waiting for a court order. I expect them to fight this, because they have a very good track record there, but the moment they capitulate the floodgates will open.

You expect them to fight this after they have now disclosed all of the data? That's quite a high amount of optimism from you.

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

#133

Post by _8j50 »

esteth wrote: post #65
noja wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is great until your family member's phone breaks, and you have to explain to them that their messages are gone forever. Allow us to choose to enable backups, Signal!

PLease no. If someone compromises one of the contacts in a large chat group's google password or whatnot, they now have the entire message and media history from me to the chat group? This is exactly why iMessage is so useless for security - one compromise on one person's apple ID and all their groups have all their messages compromised going forward.

That works the same for signal as well, if a person's phone is compromised they have all their chat. What are you talking about? Even signal folks repeatedly have iterated they don't protect messages when a device is compromised.

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

#134

Post by chopin »

_8j50 wrote: post #37
cpach wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is the most secure messaging app out there.

It is not. Session and Matrix alone use the same protocol Signal uses without needing your phone number or google play services.

I run Signal just fine without Google Play Services. I am using e/OS which doesn't have it bundled.

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

#135

Post by _8j50 »

Nitrolo wrote: post #79
noja wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is great until your family member's phone breaks, and you have to explain to them that their messages are gone forever. Allow us to choose to enable backups, Signal!

I have backups enabled actually. Sure, it's a pain to manage compared to WhatsApp, as you have to manually download it off your phone, but Signal has an option for automatic daily backups. They are encrypted with a key you have to note down somewhere though, so if you don't prepare for it the messages are, in fact, gone forever.

Your backups are useless if you want to use a different platform they support. You have to use android or iphone for life. And you can't use them on desktop without a mobile app and you can't have multiple sessions and you have to use your phone number. Right... very private.

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

#136

Post by _8j50 »

cpach wrote: post #129
_8j50 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use it these days but please enlighten me or show me the specific section you are talking about. Specifically, I was referring to libolm.

This is a starting point: https://nebuchadnezzar-megolm.github.io/

Looks like they were addressed: https://matrix.org/blog/category/security

Glad it had nothing to do with libolm itself but how it is used/not-used. I thought they had 3rd party audits for this.

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

#137

Post by happymellon »

ls15 wrote: post #53
imiric wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but couldn't you just use a disposable number? (Assuming you live in a place where you can buy SIM cards without showing a personal ID, which is most countries.) That's a minor inconvenience compared to not being able to communicate with most people who use these mainstream networks. I'm more worried about the lack of encryption and trustworthiness aspect of them than giving away a phone number.

Most countries require SIM card registration nowadays. https://www.phonetravelwiz.com/phone-travel-options/sim-card... > Of the 245 countries/territories with territory-bound mobile operators, 185 countries have SIM card registration laws. 13 will collect biometrics (fingerprints, but some will take a face scan too). 51 countries have no registration requirements. Which by itself is questionable.

A lot of people talk down on the UK invading privacy, but interestingly we don't require it!

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

#138

Post by abyssin »

ls15 wrote: post #88
emptysongglass wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand how Telegram encrypts its chats. MTProto is also used to encrypt Cloud Chats at rest. It's not just transport. Cloud Chats are not e2ee because the keys are held by Telegram. Moxie also "rolled his own crypto". "Rolling your own crypto" is typically used disparagingly by those who claim moral or intellectual superiority over the competition. The Signal Protocol was rolled by someone, yes?…

> the keys are held by Telegram This is where the privacy promise falls apart. From a user's perspective on-disk encryption makes no difference, because there is no real enhancement of privacy for them. If a third party holds the key, they hold the key. If you put something into the hotel safe, the hotel could still steal it from you. As far as I can tell, most TG users are not aware or do not care, but for those who…

I’m interested to know about what makes Moxie a bit dubious, can you share more information? I have to say I’m slightly fascinated by the character, but it’s true it doesn’t tell anything about why I should trust him.

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

#139

Post by tialaramex »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #18
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.

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…

> i dont care signal doesnt hold any messages. the government can ask for my number

Whose number? How are the government going to "ask for your number" ? Signal doesn't hold any data that would let them answer that query if they wanted to.

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

#140

Post by aliqot »

Gasp0de wrote: post #119
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.

While Signal does require a phone number to register, they only know your phone number, your date of registration and the date of your phones last connection to signal's servers. Anyone requesting your information from them needs to provide your phone number, so any info they can get is account creation date and date of last connection.

Signal shouldn't ask for phone numbers. I don't give a shit what the justification is.
Post reply on HN