Well, I wouldn't trust Telegram with something really secret and/or sensitive, but as an every day IM/calling client, it sure got even more sympathy from me by this.
Telegram Isn't for Sale
81–90 of 182 posts
Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the locations of his servers are merely a secret, isn't that just security through obscurity? Isn't that a serious weakness? Or is there a more advanced way his servers are kept secret than merely being a secret?
Why would you assume it's "just security though obscurity" and not "security plus obscurity"? Or that "obscurity"" as a security measure is a tragic weakness. This is a trap a lot of people fall into and I don't know why.
If the compromise of the secret servers causes the entire network to go down, then that secret is a weakest link, so it's not "security plus obscurity".
I don't know much about Telegram's system, but if it is run on centralized servers, then that is a serious weakness...adversaries who have the capability to find and disrupt can exploit that so even though the communication may be end-to-end secure, the entire system however is not resilant against such attacks.
Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tax burden in Germany for middleclass is at around 70%. Beeing a software engineer in germany means that you code 8months for the government and 4months for yourself. The western governments introduced more and more “hidden” taxes. So just looking at income tax is not fair. Just because he advocates for lower taxes doesn’t mean he want anarchy.
> Tax burden in Germany for middleclass is at around 70% Even under a charitable interpretation this is simply wrong. I suppose you have no first-hand experience, but have read that on social media?
If you're self-employed the tax rate is ~70%, at least for lawyers in germany. Source: My self-employed gf.
And no, she does not earn 5 figures, 4-6k gross per month with 1 part-time employee for the bureaucracy stuff (bills, phone service, faxing, scanning etc.). With a 60 hour week.
Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale
#84> The locations of his servers are a secret, as are many of the names of his employees, several of whom he’s said are fellow millionaires. How is that possible? Are the servers behind an onion network?
If the locations of his servers are merely a secret, isn't that just security through obscurity? Isn't that a serious weakness? Or is there a more advanced way his servers are kept secret than merely being a secret?
A common misconception with "Security by Obscurity" is that it's always a bad thing.
It's only a bad thing if the obscurity is critical to the security of what you are protecting. For example if you make your API completely open, but obscure it inside an app and make the domain hard to discover e.g a random string that's obviously not good.
However if you use obscurity as an extra layer in a system that is secured by other means such that removing the obscurity would not have an adverse effect on the security of the system that's fine. Hence there's no reason not to obscure things to make it more difficult for an attacker as long as that's not all your security.
Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know where the author grew up, but didn’t he get anything in return for his taxes? I’ve had free healthcare, free college education, free libraries, police and fire departments protecting me, occasional grants, a social security network in case I lost my ability to work... I would never say that “taxes limit my options” because the personal record shows the opposite. Besides, it’s not about just me: the whole…
But wouldn't you have liked to shop around for those free-but-paid-from-your-taxes services? And benefit from competition between providers which drives prices down and quality up? Government are ultimate monopolies: always getting worse and more expensive. Maybe you are thinking about a handful of functioning, high quality governments (US, Germany, Nordic States) but I am thinking about the great majority of the gov…
No. I really don't want to shop around when I've been hit by a bus and need urgent medical care. I want to know that whatever hospital the paramedics take me to is going to be equipped to handle things, and that I won't be handed a crippling bill afterwards.
I also don't want to shop around for roads, police, fire service, garbage collection, or any number of other things provided by my taxes. I definitely don't want people less well off to go without those things because they couldn't pay. The point of taxes, and particularly progressive taxes, is to ensure everyone has access to services while placing the burden for that on those most able to afford it. That isn't particularly well implemented in many cases, but I strongly believe it should be the goal.
Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the locations of his servers are merely a secret, isn't that just security through obscurity? Isn't that a serious weakness? Or is there a more advanced way his servers are kept secret than merely being a secret?
I think it is against physical seizure and tampering. A good part of security against that is obscurity, don't you think?
I wasn't just thinking about security against seizure or tampering of messages, but rather that since the servers could be taken down if discovered by a powerful adversary, then the network would no longer be functional. So it is not a very secure messaging tool to use if the threat model is to provide a reliable means of communication against a powerful adversary who could identify and take down the servers.
Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale
#87I haven't used telegram for a while, but the last time I used it e2e encryption was only an optional feature (secret conversation) instead of the default option. How does this compare to Signal or Whatsapp which both have e2e enabled by default?
Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
so .. 59% tax then?
You can't just add the percentages for income tax and VAT. If you were to combine a 40% income tax and a 19% VAT, you'd end up with 49.6% effective tax. (1-(1-0.40)/1.19) (I'm not arguing that this naive computation makes sense, you pay different VAT rates or no VAT at all, depending on what you buy. I don't think you have to pay VAT on rent, which is a significant part of the income for many people and reduced VAT o…
For the middle-class the estimates are that about 8% of your income goes to VAT.
Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Tax burden in Germany for middleclass is at around 70%. Beeing a software engineer in germany means that you code 8months for the government and 4months for yourself. > The western governments introduced more and more “hidden” taxes. So just looking at income tax is not fair. Please don't pluck figures like that out of thin air - I worked in Berlin as a developer and I easily took home ~60% of my monthly salary (pl…
You’re not counting VAT which is 19% of most of what you purchase. Corporate tax is largely bundled into consumer prices as well, and depending on your consumption patterns, and transportations choices there are other taxes that apply. In no way is this list exhaustive.
A good way to normalize it for comparison is tax income as a proportion of GDP[0]
The table on wikipedia[1] shows Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden at all over 50%. Germany at 44.5% while the UK is 34.4%, Australia at 34.3% and United States at 26%
[0] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=REV#
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_reven...
Re: Telegram Isn't for Sale
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the locations of his servers are merely a secret, isn't that just security through obscurity? Isn't that a serious weakness? Or is there a more advanced way his servers are kept secret than merely being a secret?
A common misconception with "Security by Obscurity" is that it's always a bad thing. It's only a bad thing if the obscurity is critical to the security of what you are protecting. For example if you make your API completely open, but obscure it inside an app and make the domain hard to discover e.g a random string that's obviously not good. However if you use obscurity as an extra layer in a system that is secured by…
But sounds like the entire telegram network could be taken down if the locations of the servers were comprimised. Then the message app wouldn't function anymore, so it wouldn't provide any security.