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All of Telegram's Lies About Privacy
(donald.cat)
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this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
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Nothing new here. E2E is only available in one on one chats and is disabled by default. Dont use Telegram if privacy is your main concern.
At least it has an open-source client. Very few messaging platforms can say that, and fewer have a decent UX.
It's not perfect, but it's got a good combination of features and multi-platform availability. None of the other messaging apps support all of my devices except Matrix, and ~~Matrix doesn't have stickers~~
Edit: Signal doesn't support all my devices but maybe someday! The network effect is also big. None of my family and friends are on Signal, but most have Telegram. A few have Matrix.
Also Signal is a US-based company.
Edit 2: Matrix does have stickers, i guess I'm switching
Signal
Yeah, the glaring problem of having to share your phone number is gone too:
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/6712070553754-Phone-Number-Privacy-and-Usernames
They still don’t have backups on iOS which is a deal-breaker for me.
Why would you use iOS if you care about privacy?
Because it’s far better for privacy than any Google-Play-Services-ridden version of Android, and sometimes in life you don’t want to have to deal with custom ROMs anymore.
But also that’s an exceptionally dumb question, because the implication is that privacy can’t matter to people who don’t go to the same precise lengths someone else does.
Honestly, my problems with Apple go beyond just the privacy issues.
Fair enough, Apple has some pretty fucking terrible anti-consumer behavior. Privacy is just one of the few things they do well.
After Signal's lie about dropping SMS support because of "engineering costs", I really can't believe anything else they say.
Plus the app experience sucks, it's no better than SMS.
Are you talking about the signal from five years ago or something?
That's not true, but even so, the whole point is to be an alternative to SMS. It provides that experience, so I'm happy.
I couldnt find a working Ubuntu touch app last i tried to use it
Ubuntu touch is dead. Are there at least native browsers for it?
Is it? I still get regular updates. Yes there are a few, i use Morph
https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/
For some reason, I thought Ubuntu touch was EOL. Probably because I tried it on a Redmi 5 and it was an unofficial 2018 build. Is the Morph browser still supported? I checked the Github page and the last changes were 3 years ago.
A platform that values my privacy? Or stickers? Tough choice, I guess, except Signal has both.
It's a messaging app, it's useless if there is nobody to message. I dont have any friends using signal yet.
Also it doesnt work on my phone (Ubuntu touch). There used to be a community app but it's not currently working.
I sincerely wish them success, but it's hard to have faith that a US-based company will actually protect your privacy. Not that Telegram does either. I dont know what information they do even collect.
You don't have to, though? 1) The E2EE Signal protocol is well-audited to be robust. 2) The app itself is FOSS, and there are a lot of eyes on it. 3) The server code is FOSS. Even if they're lying about what code they use, it doesn't matter because it's E2EE. 4) If you think Signal might be bait-and-switching by building from different source code, you'd be provably wrong. They have reproducible builds, so were they to actually try this, it would be like sending up a flare to the entire security community. 5) Literally every single time OWS has been subpoenaed, the only information they've been able to provide is extremely basic metadata like server connection times.
You have no idea what you're talking about, I'm sorry. There's functionally less "trust" here than any messaging application on the planet. The network effect remark is at least valid and can be debated (although I personally have zero friends who use Telegram and at least several who use Signal). This one is just so, so wrong that it's not even up for debate.
Thanks for the elaboration. I'm not familiar with how Signal works.
Educating yourself on topic is a good idea BEFORE you plan on arguing about it online.
Doesn't have unlimited storage though. It's really nice being able to jump to any of the 15,000+ images shared with a single person dating back to like 2015 within a couple seconds. I know that's a privacy concern but nothing comes close to telegram's searchability and the unlimited storage.
Matrix does have stickers
Problem I have with matrix is that, afaik, does not currently support temporal or self destructing messages. Which is a big no-no for privacy conscious usage.
I am enjoying SimpleX chat
Can you elaborate on your last sentence? Is the US more or less trustworthy than alternatives?
Less than some. The US gov has a history of forcing US-based corporations to disclose private data regardless of their policies or the law.
I can't give you a good alternative though. I'm sure the same thing happens in many countries
A good alternative is a federated, selfhosted solution hosted in a jurisdiction unfriendly to yours.
If you want to self-host chat, Conduit (implementation of a Matrix server) is really nice. Much better than the official Matrix implementation (Synapse).
Yes!! I hosted it, indeed much lighter on resources! Broke encrypted rooms a few times, but overall was fine. However, it lacks deletion of old media and messages, so I broke it while trying to delete big media one by one (it broke displaying of ALL media). And when I reinstalled, a reinstall just didn't launch. So... While it is 100% on me, feels like it's still not the optimal solution if you're constrained on disk space.
Doesn't need to be unfriendly, just needs to not kow-tow to your jurisdiction.
Stickers are pointless if I have no one to send them to. So I stay in telegram.