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Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

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Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#71

Post by teekert »

vbezhenar wrote: post #44
pydry wrote: post #28

Given the location of Telegram's servers (Dubai), and the nature of the government (neutral dictatorship) and the lack of encryption, my default assumption would be that not only are they selling access to your data to major governments, they've probably even streamlined the bidding process.

Both Russians and Ukrainians use Telegram, including confidential messaging with their agents on the foreign territory. So that's a prove enough for me, that it's safe enough.

I would guess that those two would turn encryption on?

IDK, the whole anti-Signal post really makes me suspicious of Telegram whereas I wasn't really before. Are trying to be the universal honeypot for agencies?

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#72

Post by dannyw »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #34
dangoodmanUT wrote: post #4

Telegram has always felt like the catch-up of the messenger apps. I don't know a single person who uses it.

?! Telegram is often praised here for their features that helped them to grow and made people keep using it. Something that Signal should consider doing. They have 900million monthly active users.

Yes, their app and UX is absolutely delightful.

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#73

Post by FabHK »

yreg wrote: post #38

So the entire argument for "Telegram isn’t a secure messenger, full stop." is that E2EE is opt-in? If that's all there is to it, then the opinion is rather weak. edit: maybe post a comment in addition to pressing the downbutton. I'm curious what's so problematic about what I've said.

The non-standard crypto was also problematic, at least initially. Furthermore, as outlined, the claims on reproducible builds vis-a-vis Signal are debatable - both provide them on Android, neither satisfactorily on iOS.

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#74

Post by gkbrk »

You can download Telegram and many forked clients from F-Droid. All the builds are from source code, so you know the source code is up-to-date.

Any distro can have Telegram clients, both official and third-party, in their repository.

Compared to this

1. You cannot download Signal from F-Droid. You need to download it from the Google Play Store. The released source code has lagged behind the version on the Google Play store by long periods of time many times. One example was when they implemented cryptocurrency payments, pushed the update to everyone but no one could inspect the source code.

2. Signal has sent legal threats to repositories that package Signal. The repos either need to confuse users by offering the client under other package names or remove it.

3. They also send baseless threats to forks that use their server. Combined with their lack of federation, this results in people having to use multiple apps from different sources with a much larger attack surface.

4. They beg for donations in the app even though they made an app with payments and cryptocurrency integration with an obscure coin (which they were involved with and had ample opportunity to hoard before ever announcing it as a feature in Signal).

5. They claim to have privacy features that other messengers lack, but these features are based on known-to-be-broken technologies like Intel SGX.

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#75

Post by ixwt »

Another thing that wasn't pointed out: Du Rove said "Signal messages have been exploited against them in US courts or media."

This would be the same case for Telegram as well, if someone has your phone. I believe that Signal can have a lock on the client, and the database is encrypted.

The other part that Du Rove conveniently left out: Signal went against the US courts and won [0]. When subpoenaed to give all user information they gave them all that had: the unix timestamp of when the account was created, and the last date you connected to the signal service. That was in late 2021. I'm really curious as to what Telegram has told the FSB.

[0]: https://signal.org/bigbrother/cd-california-grand-jury/

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#76

Post by kreyenborgi »

billpcs wrote: post #20
dangoodmanUT wrote: post #4

Telegram has always felt like the catch-up of the messenger apps. I don't know a single person who uses it.

I use it since 2014 and have felt that it's very performant (more so than Signal or Whatsapp, Messenger, or Viber). Also, it adds many useful features that other messengers didn't always have and many still don't have, for example Saved Messages, Scheduled Messages, Spoiler Messages, Reply to Message, message formatting (bold, monospace, etc), just to name a few off the top of my head.

Signal has "Scheduled Messages, Spoiler Messages, Reply to Message, message formatting (bold, monospace, etc)". I don't know what Saved Messages are, maybe it doesn't have those.

Oh, and it's end-to-end encrypted by default.

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#77

Post by teekert »

ceejayoz wrote: post #64
vbezhenar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Russians and Ukrainians use Telegram, including confidential messaging with their agents on the foreign territory. So that's a prove enough for me, that it's safe enough.

Which bits of this war scream “good judgement and opsec” to you? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/world/europe/ukraine-russ... > Ukrainian artillery targets Russian soldiers by pinpointing their phone signals. Despite the deadly results, Russian troops keep defying a ban on cellphone use near the front.

You're scared, likely to die face down in the mud. Would a little higher chance of death be worth completely cutting yourself of from your family?

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#79

Post by [deleted] »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #52
dangoodmanUT wrote: post #4

Telegram has always felt like the catch-up of the messenger apps. I don't know a single person who uses it.

I don't get this. I'm in the EU and nearly everybody I know has Telegram. Telegram has a huge advantage versus WhatsApp: it's not Meta. Then the Telegram UI is really excellent. When you tell people all your friends and family are using it and that's it's not from Facebook, they usually install it on the spot. Then they're hooked.

[deleted]
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