No one uses telegram for privacy They use for unlimited broadcasting channels Free unlimited file hosting Large groups and communities Powerful bots and mini apps etc
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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Privacy
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And now you know why we've been telling you not to use Telegram.
What seems crazy to me is how many people they managed to convince that they were private when they most definitely are not.
Any criminal with half a brain knew what's up
Brain dead normies lapring edge lord on there were just useful idiots for their handlers
I hear signal is not a good alternative. What is a good one, then?
Signal is an excellent alternative if you're looking for an E2E encrypted SMS replacement your grandmother can use.
Depends on your threat model. Signal is fine if you just want to communicate with average joe. If you want something more anonymous look into secureX,
Where are you hearing this?
https://lemmy.ml/comment/15999861
In the blog posts I read where the author, a security engineer, audited and/or reported vulnerabilities with two E2EE chat protocols commonly recommended as Signal alternatives--Matrix and XMPP--both had implemented half-baked solutions or refused to solve the issue at all in some regards, and both had evangelists that gave dismissive responses. The XMPP chud dev gave a laughably childish response, and the Matrix dev even admitted the team being aware of the olm vulnerability and deliberately refused to fix it for years. Not that Signal cultists are any better and not negating the legitimate security and trust issues with the Signal platform, but Signal is still a decent platform for most people's threat model, though it would be nice if there was an alternative that could compete with Signal to recommend to most people instead. If you care about metadata resistance and your threat model involves high stakes if your assets are compromised, the blog author suggests Tor-based solutions such as Cwtch and Ricochet Refresh.
This better not be a “computers received pentagon funding when the first Vaccum tubes were being made”.
Signal is an excellent choice. Literally forces cops to get a warrant for your phone and hope you didnt purge your messages after a few days.
If you want anonymity on top of that than simplex
I think Signal is probably fine unless you're doing some real weird shit.
It doesn't have to be "real weird shit" though for it to be a problem, coordinating about protests or other political activism on Signal is sketchy because of the phone number requirement, and just having your phone number be associated with another suspect phone number from inferred conversations is enough to potentially get you in trouble. Or if some national anti-abortion or anti-LGBTQ law happens and they put serious effort into enforcing it, activity on Signal, which is not anonymous, could be used against you and people you had conversations with. Yet I've seen multiple groups who shouldn't be using Signal use it anyway and people thinking they're anonymous on the platform because it keeps getting recommended. SimpleX and Cwtch have weaknesses also, but both of them take anonymity more seriously than Signal does.
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I know Lemmy hates telegram but it should be common knowledge that all platforms process requests from authorities.
The repeated posting of this story the last few days seems artificial.
I don't really have any special hate for Telegram myself, and I never saw it as a secure communication platform. I have more problem with Signal because people treat it like it's paragon of privacy and security.
I'd be curious to hear your criticisms of Signal! While I haven't seen anyone describing it as a "paragon of privacy and security" I do think it is a highly accessible SMS replacement that is also open source, end-to-end encrypted, and operated by a nonprofit.
The most obvious one that has been explained to death here is that Signal collects vast amounts of metadata. It's also a centralized service that's operated in the US, and it doesn't even make reproducible builds for the Android client.
Where did you read that they are collecting vast amounts of metadata? Not challenging your claim just that I have been trying to find more info and came up empty. Signal says "we don’t collect analytics or telemetry data" but that's about it.
You need a phone number to sign up. Phone numbers are metadata that uniquely identifies people, and this data constitutes a network of connections. If this metadata is shared with the government, then it can be trivially correlated with all the other information collected about people.
In my book a single data point (a phone number) is not "vast amounts of metadata". Again, I have never seen someone describing Signal as a “paragon of privacy and security”, Signal itself certainly does not say that (It's presented as an improvement over SMS).
It's the volumes of phone numbers collected collectively that constitute vast amounts of metadata. Meanwhile, I've seen plenty of people advocate using Signal as the best option for privacy. And any time there is a criticism of Signal then then brigades of people inexplicably appear to vigorously defend it.
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Many Signal alternatives also have security issues of their own, often making them less secure than Signal. This includes Matrix and XMPP. In the blog post regarding XMPP+OMEMO, the author replies to a question about which would be better than Signal, Matrix, and XMPP with this suggestion:
Anyone who cares about metadata resistance should look at Cwtch, Ricochet, or any other Tor-based solution. Not a mobile app. Not XMPP. Not Matrix.
In regards to Ricochet, not having a mobile app version makes it difficult to recommend to less tech savvy people.
Sure, every platform has its own set of problems, and it's fine to make an informed decision that you're willing to accept the deficiencies of a particular platform you're using. The issue I have is with people pretending that Signal doesn't have the problems that it has as we can see happening in this very thread.
I'm with you there. This wasn't meant as an argument against your statement. I brought up the issues regarding Matrix and XMPP as they are often recommended as alternatives to Signal, and after learning about this blog in a previous conversation I had about this topic, I thought it would be a good resource to bring up so people can be informed about those platforms and some alternatives that may be better than Signal while being metadata resistant.
Matrix, even if it was a siv, would be better than Signal, because it doesn't know your phone and passport numbers.
I'm not denying that major flaw of Signal, in which part, yes exposing your phone number tied to your Signal account basically negates Signal's security, as well as Signal's centralized server being proprietary. Nevertheless, when using Matrix, you need to ensure you and everyone you communicate with uses a client that isn't still using the deprecated libolm cryptography backend (and that it uses vodozemac).
I think the point is not that Telegram (the company) sucks, it is that Telegram (the app) sucks. A proper messenger like Signal leaves the provider with no information to hand over.
Many people still seem to be under the false impression that Telegram is private, so it's worth spreading around.
Idk why you're being downvoted when u said the truth
Welp then I think we have to sue them to oblivion S/ But really can’t blame most people whose Are Accustomed to using TeleGram And WhatsUp
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