“Telegram is not a private messenger. There’s nothing private about it. It’s the opposite. It’s a cloud messenger where every message you’ve ever sent or received is in plain text in a database that Telegram the organization controls and has access to it”
“It’s like a Russian oligarch starting an unencrypted version of WhatsApp, a pixel for pixel clone of WhatsApp. That should be kind of a difficult brand to operate. Somehow, they’ve done a really amazing job of convincing the whole world that this is an encrypted messaging app and that the founder is some kind of Russian dissident, even though he goes there once a month, the whole team lives in Russia, and their families are there.”
" What happened in France is they just chose not to respond to the subpoena. So that’s in violation of the law. And, he gets arrested in France, right? And everyone’s like, oh, France. But I think the key point is they have the data, like they can respond to the subpoenas where as Signal, for instance, doesn’t have access to the data and couldn’t respond to that same request. To me it’s very obvious that Russia would’ve had a much less polite version of that conversation with Pavel Durov and the telegram team before this moment"
When you build a backdoor into your “encrypted messenger” its just a surveillance app
“Don’t use those other chat apps, where the barbarous Russians or sneaky Arabs could compel your data. Use my app instead: FedChat: Built For Feds, By Feds” - Feddy McFedderson, founder of SignalI mean I’m not a huge Signal fan but I certainly trust them far more than either telegram or whatsapp. I would at least be ok installing telegram if I had to; if someone told me I needed to download a meta product to save my own life I’d tell them I’m ready to die.
Why don’t we all just truly go FOSS and use matrix?
Matrix results in way more meta data and through federation those meta data could be stored jn way more places.
Besides their main developer (element messenger) are cop / military boot lickers.
Those are some examples for why you might not use it, but depending on you use case you might still prefer it over signal.
Because it’s not p2p.
As much as I’d like to favor foss and federated messenger apps, telegram isn’t as much garbage as whatsapp:
1.The client is somewhat open source and have forks like Forkgram, Materialgram and unoffical clients like Telegrand.
2. Telegram isn’t E2EE by default but at least it doesn’t lie about it and have E2EE secret chat when nessesary, that means crucial chats stay on your device and the rest stay on their database recoverable and syncable across devices.
(Yes, whatsapp supposedly is E2EE but we can’t know for sure, it’s closed-source.)
3. You can use telegram as a cloud service with only 2GB per file limit, unlike whatsapp.
(There’s even a third-party app that utilise this as a cloud gallery.)
4. Even tho telegram has ads in large channels, telegram isn’t funded by a greedy big-corp and it doesn’t datamine you, ads are based on the channel’s topic.Yes, in terms of privacy, telegram isn’t the best option, Signal, Session, XMPP, Matrix, or SimpleX have better privacy features, less linkability and E2EE by default but telegram is very mainstream and got more publicity, making it the whatsapp alternative it advertises itself as-is.
Publicity doesn’t make a better messenger app, but for what it tries to do, it’s adoptable for simple users, doubles as cloud storage and is more secure than the garbage being whatsapp.Immigrating users to different apps is a headache on it’s own, but if they know of telegram and it’s not privacy invasive, that’s not bad.
Isn’t it possible to verify WhatsApp encryption with packet sniffing?
Yes, but how would you know Meta doesn’t have a copy of your encryption key (ex: when you sign up) and keeps a copy of your encrypted messages somewhere?
AFAIK your encryption key resides as whatsapp’s data folder but since whatsapp is closed-source you can’t guarantee that whatsapp gave the encryption key to Meta’s server at some point when it was created; (or it was created on their servers and sent to your device.)One would just assume the encryption key is made on your device and never sent to Meta and all the E2EE messages aren’t kept on Meta’s server after they are sent.
Again, Meta is a company that is profiting on targeted advetising and selling user data, how would whatsapp be a free service without any profit?
Also, Here’s someone who saw their whatsapp chat used for targeted ads on them in case you have doubt.
- I can’t find a link to this but I’m sure I’ve read an article about what happens when you “report” a message someone sent to you in WhatsApp. In this case some reviewer at Meta will look at your message and determine if it violated the rules. IIRC the article talked about them most likely being added to the chat but not visible.
- There’s a recent lawsuit that shows that Meta can view your messages through internal systems: https://proton.me/blog/whatsapp-encryption-lawsuit
- Meta’s AI assistant in WhatsApp leaves more questions about privacy. How closed-off is the data used in this AI from other parts of Meta’s services?
Again, as I said, whatsapp doesn’t feel like a genuine messenger app as much as an oversimplified garbage made for tracking users on the background for profiting.
Even the deal of “giving” Llama LLMs (Meta AI) to everyone feels sketchy and look abusive the way it is pushed to users.Likewise all of meta’s services, the only catch with whatsapp that it used to be good and it’s a well-spread application, that’s why they bought it instead of improving FB’s messenger, as meta want to benefit of it’s naive userbase who think whatsapp is “As fine as ever”;
To you, publicity is nothing important and it doesn’t make a good product, to meta however, publicity is “everything” and it shall be all-time high, they have more analytical data about their userbase and have a good idea of what they would do and what decision they would take.
Yeah don’t get me wrong, I despise meta and their facade pretending WhatsApp is private. Your example is evidence but not proof but it does not mean I doubt you because it really doesn’t surprise me. Gmail likes to pretend it’s secure and private too because data in transit is supposedly encrypted but they can still just read absolutely everything in your inbox themselves
Just…
Don’t let them deceive you;If you must use deceitful software like Gmail, Whatsapp, Discord, office or whatever, just try your best not to leak your personal data on them, and if you can hinder the tracking, do so.
If you can use other (preferably FOSS) software, do so, there’s plenty of solutions out there and most of them are free, and sometimes selfhost-able.
Google, Meta, Microsoft or whatever corp can lie about security or privacy all they want, but in the end, they only fool themself thinking their monetary practices aren’t obvious and they can fool everyone, trust is a hard thing to earn and they can’t earn it with fraud.
The product mostly show itself, and you have to go around it to know what’s it’s deal, if you prefer to not do so, you can search if any security researcher or analyst did investigate the product; For example Google claims Chrome browser is “safe” and “secure” dispute them giving so much trackable APIs for websites, and having a horrable default permissions, and don’t forget the “Manifest V3” transition just to remove ads (and trackers) blockers like uBlock Origin.
You don’t need solid proof to know what is what.And then you just type " Foss Chrome Alternatives" or “Private Browsers” on a search engine like DDG where you can find many articles to help you find one (like this) and you’d be done.
Forget about ““Others”” right now, your well-being matters the most.
His NAME is MARLINSPIKE?? Like the ancestral home of Captain Haddock from Tintin?! We really are living in a simulation
It’s also the name of a tool for working with braided rope.
It’s not his real name
Telegram has first party bot support, Signal doesn’t.
That’s the #1 reason I still have Telegram installed.
Let me have my own bot, officially, connected to Signal so I can do my nerdy automation shit through it and I’ll move over fully.
Please don’t link me any of the “just use a prepaid phone and…” hacks. I don’t want that, I want first party support.
I predict yet another Signal-related hack within the month.
Could you maybe resfresh my memory a bit and share a few previous signal hacks? Thanks
And it will again be about someone added to the wrong group. Meaning - not a hack.
See this is why I’m reluctant to start listing them because I don’t want to get dragged into an interminable discussion about how hacks like https://thehackernews.com/2025/02/hackers-exploit-signals-linked-devices.html?m=1 somehow “don’t count” because it was the user’s fault, or https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/4850133017242-Twilio-Incident-What-Signal-Users-Need-to-Know doesn’t count because it didn’t include chat messages.
The irony is I very carefully chose my words when I said “Signal-related hack” instead of “Signal hack” because I knew fanbois would show up to argue that anything short of a central database leak isn’t really a hack.
It’s a thread about comparing Signal to Telegram of all things. In comparison to Signal as anything secure Telegram doesn’t exist in any quality.
At the same time Signal doesn’t have mass group chats and is not intended for that purpose.
The first link does count, it’s a valid failure from Signal devs. Humans err.
The second link does not, it’s an unofficial centralized aggregator, not from Signal devs, and the “hack” was a direct consequence of how it worked. It’s absolutely something that no sane person would use.
It’s a thread about comparing Signal to Telegram of all things
The relevance is that it’s not some unaligned security professional talking in the article, it’s literally the guy that runs Signal having a pop at his competition.
yet another? what dou mean?
they definately installed signal and fucked afterward
Dude for the first 15s I thought this is porn
Raising money for Signal with OnlyFans
its the sauna
How I hate that saunas are associated with porn and sex. It’s not supposed to be sexual and more importantly it’s an awful, just terrible place to have sex
I don’t know man, those benches are nice for a variety of positions. Plus, you are already naked…
Just trust me on this one, 80C+ room just isn’t the place for that sort of exercise. And it’s not like your heart rate isn’t up already lol. It’s a terrible experience
Slow down, big daddy! You can be gentle at it sometimes.
I want you to actually try sauna sex and report back to me, if you don’t believe me. But don’t say I didn’t warn you lol
you are gonna feel way too gross in the sauna to wanna have sex
Telegram had a good PR from Mr. Robot.
Pretty sure signal is not the best option, but telegram should be avoided at all costs.
How is signal not the best option?
Signal is good because it is easy to get others on board because of its simplicity, while having good encryption and security. However, SimpleX is just a better option. No phone number required, the same encryption, you can make a new profile whenever you want and you can have however many you want at a time. The groups can hold thousands of people. You can have it automatically make a new anonymous profile for you for each contact and group so that you can’t be tracked across them apart from your writing style. There are no usernames, you add each other through links, which can be temporary or permanent, and you can add or remove a link whenever you want.
Sorry for that big wall of text, I just spat out all the things SimpleX is better for. I think that it’s platform is the future.
the tracking argument against signal is pretty weak imo… signal has no ability to build a social graph because in 2018 they implemented a feature called sealed sender which is a cryptographic mechanism that allows you to send a message without disclosing to signal who you are (the receiver still knows, and rate limiting still works)
the reality of signal having your phone number is they know you (as an identity/person) use signal and that’s it
I know about that and that’s why I’m not worried about them having my phone number, but its still a pointless requirement. What if I don’t have a phone number for privacy reasons? SimpleX is still better in every way other than simplicity.
i’d agree that for privacy alone simplex is probably better, but until it scales i’m not sure we can say that it will be able to scale. i have my doubts, simply because if you can have unlimited anonymous profiles, when it becomes a high value target then spam becomes a real problem, and then there’s only 2 major solutions that i can think of:
- raising the barrier to creating new accounts so that accounts become relatively expensive (essentially what the phone number does)
- spam filters, like email, which is a whole separate system that can be abused like it has been with email
Well spam seems pretty easy to combat. A lot of the groups make you talk to the admins and wait before you can talk, and you can have it so you approve contacts before they can contact you using one of your links. And if one of your links falls to spam, you can just delete it. I’d say spam isn’t really an issue.
that’s reasonable. perhaps the best service is one with both options: you can somehow have a verified account that lets you msg people you haven’t connected with (perhaps they have an “allow from verified” contact option), and join groups without verification, but that you can also have unlimited anonymous accounts that are assumed spammy
Tbf, there’s options that are just as secure and don’t require a phone # to register, but that doesn’t make Signal bad
Signal does not require a phone number to register anymore, afaik.
Signal still requires a phone number. What was added is usernames for contacts, so you no longer need to give other people your phone number for them to contact you. It is a step in the right direction, but it would be great for them to get rid of the phone number requirement all together.
Ah thank you for the clarification!
What do you mean?
DoDDOW uses it, it must be super secure /sIt is as long as you pay attention to who is in a group chat
Why do you say signal is not the best option? My only discomfort with it is the phone number requirement (and I think they maybe relaxed that)
Supported by US nasty agencies… They do NOT care about any-ones ‘privacy’ and would only support if they have another purpose or a way in…
Phone number requirements + afaik servers are in USA + it was some cryptocurrency related story (they tried to add some crypto wallet at some point)
Yeah, you can make payments with MobileCoin. 🤮
Luckily, Signal does give you the option to completely ignore it. I only see it mentioned in the settings and I have not enabled it.
Same with stories, you can enable/disable them. Although, if I want to convince my normies friends to look at Signal using stories probably helps that. 🤷
It’s important to remember that for a lot of programs that have some tangentially related crypto feature, crypto used to be popular. It still is popular in some circles. There was a time when it made sense to include those features because users were asking for it. So time, money, and energy was spent to add those features.
What do you expect them to do with those feature now? You really think they’re just going to delete them? Why would they remove an already developed and implemented feature? They hurt nothing. People don’t have to use them. Them existing doesn’t take anything away from the app functionality.
It’s like being upset that old car models weren’t recalled to remove ash trays and cigarette lighters when smoking became unpopular.
It’s not the wallet itself that bothers me (it is these days equivalent of adding some ai feature), but the story behind their involvement with and promotion of a particular blockchain or coin . Frankly can’t recall all the details .
Damn near everyone was making a coin at some point. Again, why would they remove or get rid of a feature they spent time, money, and energy to develop when it doesn’t hurt anything by being there. In fact, they’d have to spend more time, money, and energy to remove it than if they just left it in place.
Ah I am not bothered by the cryptocurrency … thing. It’s pretty well buried in the app, and doesn’t seem like anything they’re particularly trying to push. More like a failed experiment.
afaik servers are in USA
You mean one of the few countries not currently trying to dismantle encryption?
Unlike Signal, Telegram is successful in getting people to move away from Meta’s Whatsapp.
Idk about that. Signal is the main alternative to WA in some parts of europe.
Telegram has approximately 1 billion global users. Signal only has around 100 million. Telegram is about 10x the size of Signal.
Why are they sitting in a sauna?
No windows, therefore quiet, and good acoustics.
Build sauna, host interview in sauna, sauna is tax writeoff
Damn that’s brilliant.
Depending on country you may be able to subsidize only part of the sauna as a business expense if it’s a sauna at your home office, but actually hosting interviews in it would for sure help your case in claiming it to be operated for business.
I don’t know how it is in the US though.
It should be the law that any information a online service collects about it’s users should be given to the government immediately and unconditionally, then suddenly people will start really caring about how much information a service has access to.
then suddenly people will start really caring about how much information a service has access to
I sincerely doubt it. The majority of people will accept that this is just “how it is” and will move on with life. After all, they’re not doing anything wrong.
I agree, if majority of people would care, Linux PCs would be the most popular option. They care about convenience only, but not even that much. Instead of researching the best they are just ok with the advertised options. They eat what they get.
She’s pretty hot for a programmer.
And with a name like that she was destined for greatness.
Moxie is the guy
Hmm. Looks more like a Bill
