For years I have ignored warnings around Telegram being "unencrypted". Though, for unknown reasons, they first banned my account and then recently, "restricted" my account. Yesterday, I had a private chat with someone and based on specific keywords, Telegram suddenly "restricted" my account. While not explicitly "censorship" (or even remotely illegal), Telegram is likely doing scanning in private chats. This was a red line and I quit the platform.
Tell HN: Telegram is most likely doing client side scanning; I quit Telegram
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Re: Tell HN: Telegram is most likely doing client side scanning; I quit Telegram
#2Re: Tell HN: Telegram is most likely doing client side scanning; I quit Telegram
#3Telegram is encrypted if you tell it to be. Did you?
Re: Tell HN: Telegram is most likely doing client side scanning; I quit Telegram
#4> For years I have ignored warnings around Telegram being "unencrypted"
Guess what the people reading this thread, using Telegram, are going to do.
Re: Tell HN: Telegram is most likely doing client side scanning; I quit Telegram
#5I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but late July/early August 2023 there were rumors in certain circles regarding a potential Telegram session takeover exploit or some other scary weirdness. It ended up being a keyword (or probably URL) that was on Telegram's blocklist. Sending it to someone in a private chat resulted in account restrictions or session terminations, iirc.
Seems like instead of having a functioning moderation team, Telegram uses extremely lazy automation and hopes nobody will care.
Re: Tell HN: Telegram is most likely doing client side scanning; I quit Telegram
#6> For years I have ignored warnings around Telegram being "unencrypted" Guess what the people reading this thread, using Telegram, are going to do.
Telegram user here. I’ll keep using the app with no end-to-end encryption, like usual. It’s widely known by now (I think) that Telegram doesn’t have default E2E encryption. Personally, I stay on it because of the network effect (staying on the same network as my friends).
Re: Tell HN: Telegram is most likely doing client side scanning; I quit Telegram
#7Telegram is encrypted if you tell it to be. Did you?
OP hints that the keyword checks are on-device, which would not be protected by e2ee.
Re: Tell HN: Telegram is most likely doing client side scanning; I quit Telegram
#8Re: Tell HN: Telegram is most likely doing client side scanning; I quit Telegram
#9What were the keywords?
Re: Tell HN: Telegram is most likely doing client side scanning; I quit Telegram
#10> For years I have ignored warnings around Telegram being "unencrypted" Guess what the people reading this thread, using Telegram, are going to do.
Telegram user here. I’ll keep using the app with no end-to-end encryption, like usual. It’s widely known by now (I think) that Telegram doesn’t have default E2E encryption. Personally, I stay on it because of the network effect (staying on the same network as my friends).
Plus the user experience is, imo, the best in class.
The client is open source in C++ which explains why it runs laps around Electron apps: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop
It's so quick and intuitive.
Plus writing interactive bots for it is trivial.