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Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#141

Post by BurningPenguin »

mr_mitm wrote: post #121
neverrroot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never claim there are no such people. But to try to paint a picture as e.g. most of mainstream media did and some still do, that only such kind of people protest the measures etc. is not correct.

I remember lots of documentations on TV and interviews with social scientists that emphasize that the Covid protests in Germany are weirdly originating from a very broad spectrum, with lots of alternative and esoteric groups, which aren't right wing at all. The Verfassungsschutz even had to invent a new category: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/verfassungsschutz-querdenke... Some examples of mainstream media that em…

I actually grew up with esoterics due to my mom. The major problem is, that they don't accept facts that are verifiable by scientific means. They think everything is subjective and therefore everything you can think of is somehow true. This makes them especially perceptible to propaganda efforts, which is why there is a distinct brown flavor to many esoteric practices and theories.

They may not be considered right-wing, but they are falling quite easily for those rat catchers.

Just take the "Truther" movement. Those guys were readily spreading antisemtic bullshit in the last 20 years. They were quite successful in the esoteric scene.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#142

Post by hungryforcodes »

em-bee wrote: post #83
izzytcp wrote: post #3

Hi, German here. How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal. I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. App should be dead already or turned into a dating app because it’s clearly not seriously privacy fucused.

I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! telegram is the only chat app that offers Free Software clients, does not force me to share my phonenumber, is easy enough to use even for old people. matrix is ok. but element is still buggy and the ux is complex and takes some learning. another alternative is deltachat. it uses smtp as transport and works with an email account. the…

It's actually fun to use?

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#143

Post by xii23 »

lausbub wrote: post #68
idaseing wrote: post #62

Lots of people here in Germany use Telegram for their purchases of substances (a serious crime here) because they consider it safe. If there's a danger of Telegram sharing their data with the police, the app is no longer safe. If it it's no longer safe for one thing, people won't use it for anything.

Source? I use Telegram as a normal messenger because it has a good UI.

Anecdotally, I live in Germany and use it for that almost exclusively, and know a couple of coworkers who also use Telegram like this.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#145

Post by newpseudonymn »

smarx007 wrote: post #117
hef19898 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange, I have Signal on a de-googled Puxel 2 runnibg ClayxOS...

But I guess you have an original Signal APK installed, not an alternative client that connects to Signal servers.

There are third party apps that connect to Signal's servers such as Molly. https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#146

Post by meijer »

zoobab wrote: post #134
em-bee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! telegram is the only chat app that offers Free Software clients, does not force me to share my phonenumber, is easy enough to use even for old people. matrix is ok. but element is still buggy and the ux is complex and takes some learning. another alternative is deltachat. it uses smtp as transport and works with an email account. the…

Signal require a phone number, a nogo for real privacy.

I believe Telegram requires a phone number, too.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#147

Post by deepstack »

atemerev wrote: post #123
tcfhgj wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wire and Threema are serious privacy-focused messengers. They have all things necessary for good privacy: full E2E, pseudonymous IDs not linked to phone numbers, multiple accounts, ephemeral accounts, side-channel authentication, etc. Matrix offers all that, and bots and public channels

Matrix is good, too. It is not polished enough yet, and they need to work on content discovery, but otherwise I like them, too.

I think when people compare Matrix/Element a bit differently than all others. It is federated chat client (like email), that along is something worth considering for people who wants to keep their message and communication channel open. All the other chat program, such as What's App, Signal, Wire all belong in the same universe much like AOL back then. Signal actually discourage others from running their own servers. Matrix allows us to have our own domain and address, which is forever ours. If we don't like the provider that is running our server, we can just start our own (just like email). For that along I would rather support a version of Element.io/Matrix.org than another other programs.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#148

Post by gsich »

izzytcp wrote: post #3

Hi, German here. How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal. I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. App should be dead already or turned into a dating app because it’s clearly not seriously privacy fucused.

>I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason!

Very easy to integrate custom notifications with bots. Signal is more like "maybe it works with this 3rd party tool". Also being able to use custom buttons with bots.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#149

Post by czottmann »

dgellow wrote: post #21

Can others confirm? I’m a Telegram user, located in Germany, with a German phone number and didn’t receive such a message.

Takes a while to be sent out, I guess. My wife got her notification in the morning, I got mine 5 or 6 hours later.

Re: Telegram is asking German users when to share information with law enforcement

#150

Post by ajsnigrutin »

izzytcp wrote: post #3

Hi, German here. How about not storing any information at all? Nothing to give, problem solved. Just like Signal. I seriously don’t understand why people use Telegram instead of Signal. Any reason! The app doesn’t solve any privacy problem, default chats are unencrypted, keeps personal info. App should be dead already or turned into a dating app because it’s clearly not seriously privacy fucused.

> why people use Telegram instead of Signal

Telegram has a great bot feature, that you can use to do a bunch of stuff (from smart house notifications, to "uptime robot" tracking of services up/down states, build results, temperature alarms, server monitoring, etc. One curl oneliner, and you get a message on your phone with whatever data needed (even with an image/graph or a file attachment).

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