this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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Privacy
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I hope they don't arrest them too.
Not that the action against Telegram is right, but there's a big difference between what Signal and Telegram is doing.
Would you have more info on the differences? I was wondering the same thing, but I don't know enough about Telegram to compare
Signal always responds to authorities when they ask for data, and they give them all they have: the day they registered, their phone number and the timestamp they last used the app.
Telegram has unencrypted channels of drug dealing, and what I heard is a lot of illegal porn too. The authorities want information on certain users there and Telegram doesn't comply. This is directly against the law Signal is not breaking, because they always send all the data they have to the law enforcement.
Telegram is a propaganda weapon in some sense, between two worldviews - one is "a good service doesn't require trust, because they physically can't sell you", another is "a good service you can trust because they won't sell you". And Telegram helps the latter.
So frankly - kill it with fire. Sadly I'm in Russia and everybody uses it here.
Hilarious that it's impossible. They don't even horde your data.
Is it time stamp of last usage, or time stamp of all messages?
I'm no authority on it but from what I've read it seems to have more to do with the social features of telegram where lots of content is being shared, both legal and illegal. Signal doesn't have channels that support hundreds of thousands of people at once, nor media hosting to match.
Right, the French authorities are going to present evidence that this dude was aware of specific illegal activity and refuse to comply with a legal warrant involving said actively, making him guilty of obstruction at best, and possibly conspiracy. Signal complies with warrants, they just don't have anyone's keys. Telegram has everyone's keys, and theoretically could turn them over but they refuse. That's a huge difference from a legal perspective.
Thank you. I'm going to restate your explanation to be sure I've got it:
It's easier, but Telegram's authors are from Russia. They psychologically can't accept that "never have the keys" thing. They want to have control and they want to be able to tell "yes" to the investigator, possibly for something in return.
And it's sad that it doesn't. Because that's why people use Telegram.
Media hosting - we-ell, I suppose something similar to bittorrent (or just sharing encrypted files over bittorrent) would do to back such a system?
Telegram's channels are like blogs, they have reactions and comment links leading to a groupchat associated with a channel.
It's basically a social network in an instant messenger format.
Telegram is socially , in terms of finding a market niche, the smartest thing of what's happened in the Internet recently. Durov really is a good businessman.
She responds to this point in the interview.
Indeed there is, one is an op funded by US intelligence agencies and the other is a platform that the US has no control over.
She has her hand in too many strategic places, unlike Telegram.
It's a pleasing thought, of course, that an influential person may have morals and good goals (and nice looks).
But since there's no way to know for sure, I think I'll just stop trying to classify those names into good and evil.
The very fact that there have never been any attempts in the west to stop Signal from operating says volumes in my opinion.
She's in the US
Say what you will about US but they are pouring money into the cyber security industry
Dude, it's a non-profit, and their biggest contribution is money that was made by selling WhatsApp to Facebook. Cuz the guy just couldn't live with what happened to his creation.
They won't there's no need. Their clients are garbage and they're most likely backdoored anyways. This action against Telegram is only happening because they can't get inside it, they can't backdoor it nor corrupt anyone. If they were able to do that they wouldn't be doing this.
No matter how good the protocol or client encryption, your privacy is only as good as your own physical security for the device in question.
Given that if you lose your private key, there is no recovery, I would be surprised if there were real back doors in the clients. Maybe unintentional ways to leak data, but you can go look for yourself: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android
They have one for each client.
As an example of this, I believe SexyCyborg got in trouble for reporting on leaks via people's 3rd party Chinese language keyboards. So her theory is that the keyboard apps people had installed leaked data when Hong Kong protesters were communicating with the press, rather than the actual Signal app. But… as stated above, people have to take responsibility for their device and in this case, they had chosen to install apps with leak issues into the communication process.
This is precisely why opsec is more than just an app.
Leaky keyboards are a possibility, but what is actually far more likely is just that someone on the signal group chat was a mole who was archiving the traffic for the party. Signal has since made efforts to bring anonymous accounts to the platform, which will help thwart such attacks. Though against a state actor it is still not enough unless you take additional measures to obfuscate traffic. And then that still doesn't protect you against some CCP brownshirt from tailing you and then snatching your phone out of your hand when you unlock it.
Leaky keyboards are more than a possibility. Sogou, the biggest one for Chinese typing, got found out a year or so ago for having terrible client-server encryption. They fixed it in an update, but many people didn't get the update - not to mention it's still sending every keystroke to Tencent (are the owners I think?) so they could also be saving and analysing private typing anyway.
Yeah, that's what I think it may be. Just like Apple reporting on all apps you open on un-encrypted HTTP calls and a few other things.
Telegram isn't even E2EE
If you don't turn on the secret chat feature it wont be, yes. However if E2EE was the only deciding factor for a gov to go against an App then they woudln't be going after Telegram. The fact that govts are going so hard at telegram simply proves that even when the company has access to all our chats they don't actually provide them to said govts.
I'm not saying telegram is good from a security perspective, I'm just saying that event without E2EE and all the modern wonders govts can't still get in because the company doesn't indulge their requests.