Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Many in the crypto and privacy community mistakenly trust Telegram because it's "end to end encrypted", but there are huge issues including not hiding the metadata, censorship, centralization, and phone numbers.
Send this video to your friend that asks why you won't join:
https://video.simplifiedprivacy.com/why-telegram-sucks/
nobody "trusts" telegram. but at least it s not whatsapp.
You shouldn’t trust anything.
I trust myself sometimes, its occasionally useful.
Can't trust nobody and nothing.
Can we stop doing videos as news and opinion please? They're an inefficient, annoying, and intrusive way to communicate this kind of information. If it doesn't need to be visual, it is in video format only for monetization reasons, which I'd think would be more concerning to this community.
A cringe video made by someone selling a Blockchain messaging solution.
Wow, not to pick on the narrator, but this comes off like the worst small town used car dealership TV advertisement I've ever seen.
Here's a real rundown I've put together over the years:
Pavel Durov's argument is that there should be a high functioning UI/UX experience for "non-secure" communication, and when you need it there's something much closer to Signal's very secure client-to-client encryption.
Arguably Telegram secret chats are even "close enough" to cloud chats an adversary might not notice you're doing the "super secret things" (making it harder to identify what to target).
MTProto Cloud: https://core.telegram.org/file/811140746/2/CzMyJPVnPo8.81605/c2310d6ede1a5e220f
MTProto Secret (Wrapped in MTProto Cloud): https://core.telegram.org/file/811140633/4/hHw6Zy2DPyQ.109500/cabc10049a7190694f
They also provide verified builds even on iOS (though it's a bit of a hack, not "really" quite the same thing).
The only things that can really be said about Telegram's secret chat crypto are that:
Ultimately though, it's been just shy of 10 years since Telegram entered the scene, and nobody has actually broken Telegram crypto in any meaningful way -- AFAIK, to this day. Still, there are hypothetical holes in the crypto when scrutinized vs something like signal. So, is it as good as Signal or Threema? Eh, probably not, is it good enough for the average person that isn't target by a nation state? I'd say probably.
Isn't metadata leakage a problem that this messenger shares with nearly every other (popular) messenger out there?
In case you actually want some useful info on that topic: https://www.messenger-matrix.de/
Nice comparison site! I've always referenced the below site. But I'm glad to have another thank you
That's a cool website!
Thats why Element(Matrix) is the way. Ideally selfhosted+federated, but even the default matrix.org is much better than most other chat apps.
Why Matrix and not XMPP? XMPP is also flawed, but much less bloated, easier to selfhost and doesn't have so many people being on central instance like matrix.org (there are other arguments as well).
Because there's not a single good app for XMPP and nobody uses it.
Their bleeding edge app is Conversations which costs money (already unviable), and the app looks like it's designed in 2012.
The only reason telegram was unbanned in Russia is because they started collecting and handing over identifiable data about Russian users.
The only thing Telegram has going for itself is that it's Non-Meta and Non-Western.
Anyone who has a closer look at Telegram's reputation knows that their privacy claims are dubious. If you want end to end encryption, even WhatsApp is better. But these things depend on your individual threat model.
If you want end to end encryption
You use Signal.
Yeah, end to end encryption in a closed source app can't be proven outside of the company and the company can't be held accountable by the public even if it gets a third party audit at some point because it can always just change the source.
Open source, client side, end to end encryption is the only serious standard.
open source can also change over time. The only time you can trust it is when it does have an independent third party audit and even then they have very specific language saying what they found and in what version.
open source can also change over time.
This is true, but those changes are visible. It's much harder to get away with back dooring something that's open source. At the very least, you need to be clever about it so as to not draw suspicion to your changes. I'm reminded of this story: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/30/22410164/linux-kernel-university-of-minnesota-banned-open-source
Telegram can be E2E, no reason to switch to Meta's app for it
I try to explain that to people all the time, they only use E2E for so called secret chats and comply with every country as soon as a ban is on the table, there are even reports about a case in Dheli where they did so for Audiobook piracy!
Why isn't this video uploaded to peertube instead of some dude's personal bog?
Because its just that. All it is a personal blog. It is not a valid source
I like mixing it up, even mid conversation, between Threema, Signal and Session. Put the puzzle together feds xD
Indeed it is. Use Threema 😉