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Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service

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Re: Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service

#51

Telegram is such an underappreciated platform. It has many features other platforms lack, is reasonably privacy-friendly, more so than fb/whatsapp/etc, but not enough to sacrifice features or UX. The have an API ind both official and unofficial clients for almost all platforms, including command line and native, non-electron Windows (UWP). The client API is not easy to use, as crypto and similar features are involved…

> is reasonably privacy-friendly, more so than fb/whatsapp/etc, but not enough to sacrifice features or UX. Welp, there is a lot of discussion around these claims. But we are also on Telegram, mostly because I'm using their API for our Home-Assistant instance to deliver status updates (left the bathroom window open for too long, weather-forecast on the morning and evening for the next 3 days). I like it.

I use it with OpenHAB. It is easy to integrate with, fast, and reliable.

Kind of odd that I trust Durov more than Zuckerberg, but here we are.

Re: Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service

#52
post #15

I'm not sure how this works, I installed the bot, sent /start No reply yet.

The bot is simply down. I would say 90% of all bots are down all the time and most of them completely go offline within the first 3 months.

There are a lot of reasons for that. like - no revenue - made by beginners with no scalability in mind so it simply cant handle the traffic if a bot gets popular - lose of interest in developing if it doesn't "blow up" soon - every good idea is instantly copied especially if the code is public there will be clones all over the place. - no official way to promote your bot. Most large groups will directly ban you if you tell em about the bot you made. Some even have bots to auto-ban if you name another bot. Everything is considered advertising/spam very toxic behavior in a lot groups. As with everything free on the internet there are the 0.1% who create and all other consume and give back nothing.

Source: I'm on Telegram since nearly day one. I run roughly a dozen completely free to use bots since many years. Some of them with thousands of daily users.

Re: Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service

#53

Telegram is such an underappreciated platform. It has many features other platforms lack, is reasonably privacy-friendly, more so than fb/whatsapp/etc, but not enough to sacrifice features or UX. The have an API ind both official and unofficial clients for almost all platforms, including command line and native, non-electron Windows (UWP). The client API is not easy to use, as crypto and similar features are involved…

> is reasonably privacy-friendly, more so than fb/whatsapp/etc

This is a harmfully misleading notion that we shouldn't be spreading. Without explicitly invoking "secret chats" which are not even available on desktop telegram is no different from skype and fb messenger and is categorically less secure than whatsapp.

Re: Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service

#54
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But e.g. signal don't have the feature where either party of a conversation can delete messages on both phones. This is possible with telegrams secret chat. And its great.

Signal has disappearing messages for this use case. Not the same but the crypto in Signal is so much better (and permanently enabled) it’s hard to argue that Telegram is more secure.

Definately not the same. For a better snapchat—like feature, where you want reasonable protection against your coms partner telegram is way better. Also protects you from screenshots etc (again: reasonable privacy relative to threat model)

Re: Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service

#55
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can crypto be better or worse? It's either works or it does not. I did not hear about anyone breaking Telegram crypto.

Telegram have said that you can’t trust Signal because the developers live in the US and something something the CIA, which is pretty ridiculous. They rolled their own crypto and they aren’t cryptographers, which should be reason enough not to trust its security: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-telegr...

This answer is ridiculous. They got world level mathematicians in their team, what more do you want? Who are those "cryptographers"? And why those cryptographers don't break Telegram if they think that their crypto is broken?

Again, crypto is either broken or not. Telegram crypto is not broken. It's fine. Not everyone might like it, but that does not matter. I don't know story about CIA (although I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Signal is honeypot), so can't comment about that.

Re: Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service

#56
Good work.

I was thinking about building a tool with opposite functionality - Getting chat messages delivered on email.

Reason - To switch to a full-linux based phone, as clients for those platforms aren't available. I rarely use chat message so, intuitiveness is not the concern. But when I do get a message, I would like it to be delivered via an encrypted email service.

Little thought went into this - Parsing messages from web app of the respective chat apps on a SBC.

Re: Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service

#57
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has many features other platforms lack, is reasonably privacy-friendly Telegram still has no E2E encryption by default and their official desktop client dont have it either. So it's worth nothing if no one use it. It's not that I have much trust into proprietary fb code, but there are certainly better apps privacy-wise out there.

You can choose to use E2E if desired. Why is the default so important?

Not on desktop Windows and GNU/Linux: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/871

Re: Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service

#58
post #16

Telegram is such an underappreciated platform. It has many features other platforms lack, is reasonably privacy-friendly, more so than fb/whatsapp/etc, but not enough to sacrifice features or UX. The have an API ind both official and unofficial clients for almost all platforms, including command line and native, non-electron Windows (UWP). The client API is not easy to use, as crypto and similar features are involved…

> It has many features other platforms lack, is reasonably privacy-friendly Telegram still has no E2E encryption by default and their official desktop client dont have it either. So it's worth nothing if no one use it. It's not that I have much trust into proprietary fb code, but there are certainly better apps privacy-wise out there.

Email has no E2E and people still use it all the time, for much more sensitive things than get sent over whatsapp and such.

Re: Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service

#59
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram have said that you can’t trust Signal because the developers live in the US and something something the CIA, which is pretty ridiculous. They rolled their own crypto and they aren’t cryptographers, which should be reason enough not to trust its security: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-telegr...

This answer is ridiculous. They got world level mathematicians in their team, what more do you want? Who are those "cryptographers"? And why those cryptographers don't break Telegram if they think that their crypto is broken? Again, crypto is either broken or not. Telegram crypto is not broken. It's fine. Not everyone might like it, but that does not matter. I don't know story about CIA (although I wouldn't be surpri…

>Again, crypto is either broken or not.

Security is not a yes/no thing. It is equal to the price to break it. If the cryptography is well-tested for decades, the price is much higher. This is not true for Telegram. It does not matter how good its creators are.

Re: Show HN: TrashEmail – Telegram-based disposable mail service

#60

Cool idea for a bot. Suggestion: the UI could use more polish. You can use a conversational UI instead of `/create `, `/delete `. Also, it would be nice to have a command that generates a random user ID instead of having to type something in.

I will definitely take this into account sir :)
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