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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by ShadowRebel@monero.town to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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/

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[-] Janis@feddit.de 119 points 1 year ago

nobody "trusts" telegram. but at least it s not whatsapp.

[-] sebinspace@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

You shouldn’t trust anything.

[-] Zyansheep@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago

I trust myself sometimes, its occasionally useful.

[-] elouboub@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Can't trust nobody and nothing.

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[-] totallynotarobot@lemmy.world 107 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] lud@lemm.ee 23 points 1 year ago

Videos are also much more likely to be out of date.

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[-] 1bluepixel@lemmy.world 72 points 1 year ago

A cringe video made by someone selling a Blockchain messaging solution.

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[-] h3ndrik@feddit.de 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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/

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 8 points 1 year ago

Nice comparison site! I've always referenced the below site. But I'm glad to have another thank you

https://www.securemessagingapps.com/

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 3 points 1 year ago

That's a cool website!

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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:

  1. It's not "the default"
  2. It's their own crypto (i.e., they broke "rule #1" and "rolled their own")

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.

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[-] regalia@literature.cafe 24 points 1 year ago

Stop posting videos and post well written articles.

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[-] partizan@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

Thats why Element(Matrix) is the way. Ideally selfhosted+federated, but even the default matrix.org is much better than most other chat apps.

[-] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

It may be once sliding sync and proper key handling of room history for new members get implemented.

Right now sync is very slow, the apps are heavy weight too (as I know at least partly because of how sync works today), and if a new member joins an encrypted room, they will not see the history even if you set it that way, because the clients that know the keys won't send to theirs.

[-] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 4 points 1 year ago

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).

[-] regalia@literature.cafe 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

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[-] justastranger@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

The only reason telegram was unbanned in Russia is because they started collecting and handing over identifiable data about Russian users.

[-] Microw@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] slazer2au@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

If you want end to end encryption

You use Signal.

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 9 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] slazer2au@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

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[-] gamey@feddit.rocks 5 points 1 year ago

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!

[-] elouboub@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Why isn't this video uploaded to peertube instead of some dude's personal bog?

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 year ago

Because its just that. All it is a personal blog. It is not a valid source

[-] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

Who thinks in the privacy community that Telegram is end to end encrypted? They were largely mislead. That's an option, that even prevents sync of the chat between your devices.

The thing is, Telegram has some shady things, but until Matrix becomes usable this is one of the very few usable options. And until then, use Telegram FOSS from F-droid.

[-] elouboub@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago
[-] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
  • Huge resource usage by clients
  • Huge sync times (not just first time, but also if the client was offline for a few weeks)
  • New room members in encrypted rooms can't read old messages even if you have set it up that way

Fortunately they are working on all of these, and as I just found out recently, they also have an alpha version app now that makes use of the new efficient sync, which I expect to fix 2 of the above (the resource usage is partly because of how sync works now)

[-] KrisND@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I like mixing it up, even mid conversation, between Threema, Signal and Session. Put the puzzle together feds xD

[-] DeaDSouL@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Indeed it is. Use Threema 😉

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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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