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700M users and Premium

telegram.org

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Re: 700M users and Premium

#171

Post by paulryanrogers »

philliphaydon wrote: post #170
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Say what you want about their security; they have the absolute best UX of any (primarily 1-on-1) messaging app, bar none. That is precisely because they don't give a shit about security. While others like Whatsapp bother with e2ee and resulting device sync problems and inability to do server-side search, Telegram just stores everything on a server without (meaningful) encryption and boldly claims that 'it is the mo…

WhatsApp is not e2ee. When Facebook displays advertising based on conversations in what’s app. You will never convince me it’s e2ee. It’s fake privacy.

WA was E2EE, at least at one point. Its key weakness was not notifying of key changes by default.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#172

Post by philliphaydon »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #171
philliphaydon wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp is not e2ee. When Facebook displays advertising based on conversations in what’s app. You will never convince me it’s e2ee. It’s fake privacy.

WA was E2EE, at least at one point. Its key weakness was not notifying of key changes by default.

Before being bought by Facebook I would believe it was e2ee. But believe it’s not e2ee between the client and Facebook. They just decrypt analysis and reencypt and forward. Since communication is not peer to peer and goes via FB the key exchange is prob with Facebook not the users.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#173

Post by lovingCranberry »

superasn wrote: post #40
scrollaway wrote: post #14

Telegram blows my mind. Say what you want about their security; they have the absolute best UX of any (primarily 1-on-1) messaging app, bar none. Discord is a close second. But the quality and polish of telegram blows me away to this day. And it’s lots of small features and details such as built in translation for messages in a foreign language, all the smooth animations, quick look and summaries of channels with agg…

Yes their API is one of the best. A simple curl request is enough to send a message and it has been so useful (sentry, uptime, door bell notifications(1), etc). (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrkAWSemDC8

Honestly I found their API one of the worst ones I've ever used. The documentation is lacking, and they have some unintuitive quirks like posting messages with http GET requests and randomly concatenating strings in params (botNAMEOFBOT anyone?).

I didn't enjoy using it without a third party library [1].

Sending a single message is easy, but using the rest of telegram's features is "meh" when using pure API calls.

If you want to see a well designed API, you should take a look at FTX or Stripe. I love those two :)

[1] https://telegraf.js.org

Re: 700M users and Premium

#174

Post by dmix »

HKH2 wrote: post #169
dmix wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way about TikTok. I'd rather have a Hong Kong based company with a threat of Chinese interception because I don't give a shit if the Chinese have my data (at least I dont yet). I do care about using US/Canada/UK/German/etc apps where you know at least 75% of your data is ending up in some database of a country you live in or your country is has a free-wheeling data sharing policy (with some rubber sta…

How is TikTok a Hong Kong based company?

Good point I don’t know why I thought they pretended to operate out of Hong Kong. Must be thinking of another company.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#175

Post by tiagod »

fartcannon wrote: post #23
scrollaway wrote: post #14

Telegram blows my mind. Say what you want about their security; they have the absolute best UX of any (primarily 1-on-1) messaging app, bar none. Discord is a close second. But the quality and polish of telegram blows me away to this day. And it’s lots of small features and details such as built in translation for messages in a foreign language, all the smooth animations, quick look and summaries of channels with agg…

"it’s the only popular messenger that is actually easy to programmatically interact with." Let me introduce you to Matrix SDKs https://matrix.org/sdks/

Telegram is on another level, honestly. You can do anything from a bash script with curl.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#176

Post by pmcginn »

nazka wrote: post #161

Honest question: How is Telegram better than Signal? Is Signal not the best in term of security and privacy?

I really tried to like Signal and convince my family to use it, but the lack of iOS backups, CarPlay support, and web client were dealbreakers for me. I'm no Meta fan but I've found WhatsApp to be the best mix of secure default settings plus usability. It's ugly as sin and doesn't have a Linux app, though.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#177

Post by _def »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #52
scrollaway wrote: post #14

Telegram blows my mind. Say what you want about their security; they have the absolute best UX of any (primarily 1-on-1) messaging app, bar none. Discord is a close second. But the quality and polish of telegram blows me away to this day. And it’s lots of small features and details such as built in translation for messages in a foreign language, all the smooth animations, quick look and summaries of channels with agg…

> Say what you want about their security; they have the absolute best UX of any (primarily 1-on-1) messaging app, bar none. That is precisely because they don't give a shit about security. While others like Whatsapp bother with e2ee and resulting device sync problems and inability to do server-side search, Telegram just stores everything on a server without (meaningful) encryption and boldly claims that 'it is the mo…

> That is precisely because they don't give a shit about security

Well, it's not like other messengers excelled at UX before they introduced e2ee (which is not implemented very well either)

Re: 700M users and Premium

#178

Post by anadem »

BoumTAC wrote: post #7
bathory wrote: post #2

Looking at the in-app purchase on iOS in Europe, the price seems to be about EUR 5.50 which I find to be quite steep, for these kinds of features. I've been wanting to support TG's development for a while now, but I would have hoped that this would be more in the vicinity of 1-3 Euros per month.

I think that's the main issue with those small subscriptions. We don't have an American salary here. I would happily pay for Telegram premium for 2-3€/month and have only a third of the features they propose. But 5-10€ for every service like this becomes expensive at the end of the month. I have the same issue with hey.com email provider, but they are too expensive too. I would love to have an email service provider…

> The only company I know who is doing an affordable paid service ...

Bitwarden paid is $10 per YEAR. I'm very happy to pay that. (Off-topic for discussion of Telegram though)

Re: 700M users and Premium

#179

Post by gruez »

upofadown wrote: post #162
lxgr wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty much no one does any sort of identity verification anyway on any E2EE messaging system. So that means that the people running the servers can MITM if they feel like it to get the content. The fact that anybody can verify keys raises the stakes of attempting a MITM attack significantly and thus protects the majority that doesn't verify keys themselves.

Sure it is a good feature to have, but this sort of attack is going to be targeted. You don't do it to everyone. In the unlikely event you do get caught then you can act dumb in almost all cases. Blame Pegasus or whatever...

Except that if your target finds out, it would undoubtedly increase their paranoia level, making future attacks against him harder and compromising future operations. There's a reason why law enforcement keeps wiretap warrants sealed.

Re: 700M users and Premium

#180

Post by gruez »

philliphaydon wrote: post #172
paulryanrogers wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WA was E2EE, at least at one point. Its key weakness was not notifying of key changes by default.

Before being bought by Facebook I would believe it was e2ee. But believe it’s not e2ee between the client and Facebook. They just decrypt analysis and reencypt and forward. Since communication is not peer to peer and goes via FB the key exchange is prob with Facebook not the users.

>They just decrypt analysis and reencypt and forward. Since communication is not peer to peer and goes via FB the key exchange is prob with Facebook not the users.

Do you have any evidence for this, or is this your "better safe than sorry" assumption for every e2e messenger that doesn't allow you to verify keys?

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