this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Privacy

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This is an article written by telegram's founder and CEO Pavel Durov in 2019 on "Why whatsapp will never be secure". Your thoughts?

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (8 children)

Sure, fuck WhatsApp, but Telegram isn't even end-to-end encrypted most of the time. Their group chats never are, and their "secret chat" encryption for non-group chats must be explicitly enabled and hardly ever is because it disables some features. And when it is encrypted, it's with some dubious nonstandard cryptography.

It's also pseudo open source; they do publish source code once in a while but it never corresponds to the binaries that nearly everyone actually uses.

And the audacity to talk about metadata when Telegram accounts still require a phone number today (as they did five years ago when this post was written) is just... 🀯

State-sponsored exploits against WhatsApp might be more common than against Telegram, or at least we hear about them more, but it's not because the app is more vulnerable: it's because governments don't need to compromise the endpoint to read your Telegram messages: they can just add a new device to your account with an SMS and see everything.

(β•―Β° Β°οΌ‰β•―οΈ΅ ┻━┻

Anything claiming to prioritize privacy yet asking for your phone number (Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, ...) is a farce.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Anything claiming to prioritize privacy yet asking for your phone number (Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, ...) is a farce.

Yeah, sure. The privacy farce signal.

I'm getting tired of this stupid hardline-take.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Shit, 2019 really was five years ago.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Telegram isn't perfect, but it is infinitely better than Whatsapp because it doesn't belong to Facebook, and also isn't from the United States. Also it can be used by normies without problem, unlike Matrix or Xmpp or what have you.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Signal is just fine. This with the PhoneNumber is a really stupid hardliner-take.

Something can be private without being anonymous.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Read up on Xmpp or matrix as good alternatives.

[–] Gooey0210 4 points 8 months ago

Matrix not yet untill they implemented proper encryption and security stuff

SimpleX is pretty cool

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

And the audacity to talk about metadata when Telegram accounts still require a phone number today (as they did five years ago when this post was written) is just… 🀯

Not only that, but I believe that they actively try to prevent VoIP numbers from being used to create accounts.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I don't agree with everything but that last point of yours. Requiring your phone number only means your are not anonymous. There is no need to be anonymous to communicate privately. In fact, it can be counterproductive, since your are much more vulnerable to social engineering.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Signal is great. Stop being overzealous

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 8 months ago (11 children)

What a load of hipocrisy. The dude uses unauthenticated DH for his apps "secret chats", which a bored student with a laptop can MITM in seconds. Other chats use just TLS, meaning they get to read EVERYTHING.

Use Signal, people.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (2 children)

"Here's what someone who has never created a private messenger thinks about Whatsapp's privacy."

Why would anyone care about what he has to say? πŸ’€

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Owned by Facebook, which is a giant US company.

Of fucking course it has backdoors.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I'm confused regarding why you don't consider telegram a private messenger.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's been a while since I looked into it, and things might have changed since then, but some stuff off the top of my head:

  • Messages are stored on the server, not on the device
  • end-to-end encryption not enabled by default
  • uses proprietary encryption, making security audits difficult

Apart from that it's somewhat politically questionable, based in Dubai (I think), with dubious financial backing and Russian developers. Because it's closed source and the encryption is proprietary, there's no way of knowing how much info it leaks.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Messages are stored on the server, not on the device

Yes, pretty much necessary to provide multidevice support

end-to-end encryption not enabled by default

True that and telegram sucks big here, but I donth think e2ee can be enabled in a feasible way for multiple devices.

uses proprietary encryption, making security audits difficult

The MTProto isnt open source but its fully documented, there have been security audits on it.

dubious financial backing

No. Pavel Durov have always said since starting he paid for telegram's servers from his pocket, in recent years telegram has started monetisation programs to cover its costs.

Russian developers

The founders were born in Russia, but they now have dual citizenship of UAE and France. If you are talking about politically questionable, even signal have been accused of having backdoors for CIA.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Never has been, no default e2ee, and those exploits that leaked a ton of users locations.

Not to mention, no messenger is verifiably private unless it is fully open source.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Clicking the link gives me the following warning:

The site ahead may contain harmful programs

Firefox blocked this page because it might try to trick you into installing programs that harm your browsing experience (for example, by changing your homepage or showing extra ads on sites you visit).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

weird, works for me in firefox with all privacy features enabled, can you please try this link: https://telegra.ph/Why-WhatsApp-Will-Never-Be-Secure-05-15

[–] Cheradenine 7 points 8 months ago

Your original link is blocked at DNS level on my 'Threat intelligence' blocklist.

And that link is blocked at DNS level by 'Toxic' and 'Stop Forum Spam' filters.

So it's blocked before the browser can even connect for me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I got the same warning for the original link with ff as well.

Your comment link didn't throw up a red flag.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (21 children)

WhatsApp's e2e encryption is based on the Signal protocol and active by default. Telegram's is opt-in. So much for Telegram's superior privacy...

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

WhatsApp will be never private and secure, while Telegram will be never private. 😁

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Who said telegram is secure?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (7 children)

No one said the opposite, while on WhatsApp they had several vulnerabilities that allowed attackers to get the user phone control.

An example: https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/new-whatsapp-bug-couldve-let-attackers.html

But there were many more vulnerabilities or "features" that WhatsApp allowed attackers or governments to get into user data. While I haven't read anything about against Telegram security.

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[–] Gooey0210 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Guys, please stop using telegram if you care for your security and privacy

Telegram is not fully open source, sometimes they release the source, but the hashes of the builds don't even match (so it's a different source code) 🚩

Zero transparency about data handling, even when they get caught they don't tell details 🚩 (Telegram in the recent years has got really shady reputation)

Very often ways they implement security is weird: non open source app, non open source server, leaking APIs, use of phone numbers, at some point they started asking for an email, non encrypted chats by default, never encrypted group chats.. it can continue forever 🚩

Non-standard encryption is a real red flag, non-open-source 🚩

I know some people that work/worked for the police, and they can read all the messages easy peasy, i was trying to tell to the people many years ago, but everyone was so amused by the stickers. Now you can just read stories of the journalists and activists, and how they got imprisoned with the use telegram πŸ‘οΈβ€πŸ—¨οΈπŸ’€

PLEASE, STOP USING TELEGRAM IF YOU CARE FOR YOUR PRIVACY OR SECURITY

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