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Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage

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

#221

Post by newscracker »

ardy42 wrote: post #153
newscracker wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When talking about privacy these articles should at least mention Signal. I hope they will use their recent funding [2] to polish their apps and increase the speed of innovation. I keep repeating this often, but Signal is not a user friendly platform for average users. It is good for ephemeral chats and conversations that one wouldn't care about later. Signal actively blocks chats from being backed up (and restored…

> Signal actively blocks chats from being backed up (and restored) on iOS. I don't think that's true. Signal's backups require you to copy a file from your old phone to your new phone's storage. It's possible on Android to mount your phone's filesystem on a PC. IIRC, Apple is the one that doesn't make that easy on iOS, not Signal.

What I said (specifically about iOS) is true and has been so since 2015 (or earlier).

See [1] and [2] that I linked in another comment here and check on backups explicitly being denied on iOS. This has nothing to do with Apple, and everything to do with the Signal team not willing to make it user friendly (for this case).

[1]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/wiki/FAQ

[2]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/905

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

#222

Post by newscracker »

vog wrote: post #164
newscracker wrote: post #142

Telegram is a fantastic app and platform in the IM/chat space. The feature set, speed and pace of development are far ahead of any others I've seen. The fact that its default chats are not end-to-end encrypted and are stored in plaintext on its servers is a concern. Everyone who talks about this as a huge deficiency should also consider that this applies to email too, unless one always uses encryption (like GPG/PGP o…

> The fact that its default chats are not end-to-end encrypted and are stored in plaintext on its servers is a concern. "Concern"? This is a deal-breaker. > Everyone who talks about this as a huge deficiency should also consider that this applies to email too, unless one always uses encryption (like GPG/PGP or S/MIME). The contenders here are Signal and WhatsApp, not email. Having better UX and safer defaults than em…

> "Concern"? This is a deal-breaker.

For me it's a concern, not a deal breaker. Whenever another app with end-to-end encryption comes close to Telegram on features, speed and UX, I'll switch to it completely. Currently Wire seems closest, but it still has quite a bit of catching up to do.

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

#223

Post by jonlucc »

dkrich wrote: post #183
ubercow13 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is a donation from a rich founder. It says clearly on their website: >Q: How are you going to make money out of this? >We believe in fast and secure messaging that is also 100% free. >Pavel Durov, who shares our vision, supplied Telegram with a generous donation, so we have quite enough money for the time being. If Telegram runs out, we will introduce non-essential paid options to support the infrastructure a…

Ah, thanks. So the answer is that it's not sustainable. Got it.

Not necessarily. Would you say that a museum or university isn't sustainable because its revenue from goods and services is less money than it spends? If they have an endowment or similar vehicle set up, they can use interest to pay salaries, and other expenses. That's the kind of thing that could be enabled by a single large donation and should be considered sustainable despite a lack of other recurring revenue.

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

#224

Post by derefr »

dnate wrote: post #141
s_dev wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

There is literally no downside to end-to-end encrypting text messages. So it should be default. It is just harder to implement technically.

> It is just harder to implement technically.

To the point that the major players mostly fail at doing it well enough to achieve a good UX.

WhatsApp doesn’t allow you to sync conversation history between devices, even though this is technically possible. It’s just hard, so they don’t do it. Instead, they require you to have a single device (e.g. your phone) acting as a secure conversation-history database, which other devices (e.g. your laptop) can then interact through WhatsApp “thin clients.”

iMessage manages to sync conversation history between devices while also being E2E-encrypted, but it’s the exception (and also unavailable to non-Apple users.)

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

#225

Post by tivert »

Tomte wrote: post #89
botto wrote: post #25

Telegram is scary and questionable. Inventing your own encryption is never the answer and reeks of horrible understanding of security, at this stage there is no reason they should not adopt a standard of communication like Signal protocol. Signal app itself is ok, it's a little....annoying as it requires a phone number and the UX needs some love. Keybase is great, It has ways of verifying you across multiple services…

Signal/RedPhone did invent its own crypto (the ratchet), didn't they?

> Signal/RedPhone did invent its own crypto (the ratchet), didn't they?

IIRC, they didn't invent any crypto primitives (e.g. cyphers).

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

#226

Post by StyloBill »

mruts wrote: post #212
dvdgsng wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading old IRC or ICQ logs from 2001 can be quite fun though, brings back some memories.

Mine got me interviewed by the FBI. So there are some downsides :p

I'd love to know more about this story! Care to elaborate?

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

#228

Post by r00fus »

dnate wrote: post #141
s_dev wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

There is literally no downside to end-to-end encrypting text messages. So it should be default. It is just harder to implement technically.

1) yes, harder/costlier to implement 2) maintaining security is an issue - losing security can cause outage or trust 3) patents are a thing.

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

#229

Post by martin_a »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #197
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.

Signal’s desktop client is barely good enough to check a box while Telegram’s desktop clients are as good or better than its mobile clients. Furthermore, its desktop clients are native and reasonably efficient. This is huge to me. I spend a large portion of my day in front of computers, so messaging services that take the desktop seriously are much more likely to catch my attention.

For me synchronization between desktop and mobile client is a big issue. Some messages simply don't appear on one device and vice versa. Don't know why, though.

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

#230

Post by Frondo »

14 wrote: post #207
Frondo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, if visual flair isn't important to you, then fine, it isn't important to you. It's important to me -- I like my stuff to look subjectively "nice" and Here's Signal: https://imagebin.ca/v/4aAU1ai9CG8D And Telegram: https://imagebin.ca/v/4aAUJhRmj8Jx Signal is white (and no night mode on IOS), the bubbles are undecorated rounded rectangles, there's no background and no option to set one, no stickers, no option t…

Thank you for taking the time to reply. That definitely helps show what you mean. I think for me the biggest issue lately has been I use a night mode and never really noticed signal is missing it though I only use signal with one contact but if I did use it more I think it would have come to my attention. I have always been a kind of minimalist with themes but in the examples you provided I definitely feel the one wi…

You're welcome, and I apologize for being a bit tetchy.

And you said it perfectly -- it's easier on the eyes, and I don't think it's one single thing, but several little touches.

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