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WhatsApp is bad, but Telegram isn't great either. All chats that you haven't explicitly made "secret" are not end-to-end encrypted. They're apparently "encrypte

WhatsApp is bad, but Telegram isn't great either. All chats that you haven't explicitly made "secret" are not end-to-end encrypted. They're apparently "encrypted", but the keys are controlled by Telegram. Furthermore, they frequently "ban" channels that they deem contain "inappropriate" or "adult" content. Clearly they're reviewed by either humans or AI of some sort. So... that makes me uncomfortable. Their reason for why you can trust them with encryption keys was "we didn't hand them over to <insert country here> and so they banned us where we could have cooperated and continued to have operating in said country", which seems like a pretty weak argument. For truly decentralised, private and encrypted communication, I highly recommend matrix+riot.im. EDIT: > To support this idea, Pavel Durov claims that Telegram is banned in Russia and Iran, where both governments asked him for encryption keys to access the platform’s messages. Hence for refusing the proposal given by the governments of those countries, the app was banned. From https://outline.com/BK8f7h https://outline.com/BK8f7h Even if telegram hasn't handed over keys so far, the fact remains that the keys are still controlled by them and tomorrow if they wished they could read/expose/publish/share all "private" communication. Think of it this way. If Bezos had been using telegram like is recommended in the article and the CEO of telegram wanted to spy on Bezos' chats, he would have totally been able to. They say that chats don't have e2e by default so that they can be backed up to the cloud [0], but there's no reason why you can't back up encrypted chats and ask the user for a pin and decrypt them on-device. Furthermore, telegram forces you to link your account with a phone number, and that acts as the primary (or only) form of authentication, opening you up to sim-jacking. Also, this means that anyone who has your phone number is told you're on the app and given your username, which you may not want for privacy reasons. [0] https://telegra.ph/Why-Isnt-Telegram-End-to-End-Encrypted-by-Default-08-14 https://telegra.ph/Why-Isnt-Telegram-End-to-End-Encrypted-by...

seizeheures 7y ago
> Also, this means that anyone who has your phone number is told you're on the app and given your username, which you may not want for privacy reasons. You can disable that behavior in your privacy settings iirc
- simonh 7y ago
  And the reason this isn’t the default is?....
  - wrboyce 7y ago
    Because most people are not privacy conscious and just want their messaging app to work (including having people know they are available to message on said platform).
paulcarroty 7y ago
> Furthermore, telegram forces you to link your account with a phone number, and that acts as the primary (or only) form of authentication, opening you up to sim-jacking. Linking phone or use it for 2FA should be like red light today. For Telegram, banking app, don't matter.
- seizeheures 7y ago
  Turns out you can also add a password to your telegram account to act as a form of 2FA, kinda odd but that's that I guess.
- codedokode 7y ago
  Because Telegram like many mobile apps, doesn't want anonymous users because you cannot sell them to advertisers.
- nyuszika7h 7y ago
  Actually, there's something interesting to note. If you enable 2FA, it's not possible to recover your account without either the password or the recovery email (if any). However, via SIM-jacking an attacker can still erase all data in your account and then take it over.
eptcyka 7y ago
I agree - Telegram's not ideal. But the reason they try and police adult content is because they're afraid of Apple booting them off the App store.
- Aozi 7y ago
  So Apple will boot an app that gives users the ability to send adult content to other users....? That is completely ridiculous and if that is the reason Telegram is policing adult content then Telegram is ran by idiots. You can use any IM app to share adult content, there are plenty of groups on Whatsapp sharing porn, there are plenty of groups in iMessage sharing porn, there are porn accounts on Instagram and twitter, hell the entire reason snapchat even exists is so that you can send self destructing nudes to people. The idea that an app will be banned due to content shared with people using the app, and not uploaded and/or hosted on some public website accessible to anyone (CP on tumblr) sounds completely ridiculous to me.
  - monort 7y ago
    Telegram offers channel subscriptions, it's like a blog without comments. Apple will absolutely ban apps like that (think tumblr).
    - Aozi 7y ago
      No they won't. - Instagram is stock full of sexual content - A ton of cam models have private snapchat accounts where they share porn of themselves - Reddit is basically a cornucopia of porn - I can subscribe to a porn email list - Share nudes to a group of friends on Facebook or even SMS - I can join a hundred Discord channel to satisfy every single weird ass fetish I have, - I can outright buy porn from Amazon and have it home delivered in 30 minutes. And that's just from the top of my head. I'm sure you can find a metric ton of other apps that provide their users with easy access to sexual content. None of those apps will be banned for it since that is not the primary purpose of any of these apps. It's simply something that you're able to do with the tools provided. This is like banning all knives just because someone got stabbed. If your plan is to ban apps that provide access to pornographic content, then you're gonna have to do a lot of banning. Tumblr itself wasn't banned for porn, it was banned for child porn https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-child-pornography-removed-from-app-store https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-... I would also argue that a public blogsite where tagging and discovering new content is one of the key selling points of the platform, is very different from a Telegram channel where you need to specifically know the channel name to even join. As long as Telegram puts forth their best effort to eliminate illegal content from channels, they should be fine.
rorykoehler 7y ago
Many people have sent me stuff they want to keep secret on Telegram thinking they were in an end2end chat when they weren't. Terrible UX.
brnt 7y ago
I understand that with MTProto 2 they stepped away from their homecooked crypto and follow a more traditional scheme which on the surface looks OK. It's still not the default (you must enter into a 'secret chat'), but if you do, isn't it acceptable? Telegram now is one of the last remaining clients that has excellent device support, its available for everything.
- Krasnol 7y ago
  Does anybody have an idea why they don't make it default? Is there a cost involved? Any problems with it?
  - knocte 7y ago
    It's possibly because secret chats need to be started interactively (you can't send a message until the other party has come online), and later cannot be shared among different devices (open the same channel in desktop|web|mobile), so it degrades UX.
    - bildung 7y ago
      Signal has only e2e and is able to offer synced chat between phone and desktop - the phone just sends the content to the desktop instance and vice versa.
      - knocte 7y ago
        Nice.
  - hocuspocus 7y ago
    I imagine multi-device sync and group chats would be a lot more complex with E2E encryption.
    - Krasnol 7y ago
      Works with Signal flawlessly.
gadders 7y ago
>>Furthermore, they frequently "ban" channels that they deem contain "inappropriate" or "adult" content. Clearly they're reviewed by either humans or AI of some sort. So... I don't like them much. My understanding was that it isn't Telegram that bans them, but Apple that doesn't let certain channels be shown in the iOS app. Android and the web version show all channels.
- rahuldottech 7y ago
  Such channels aren't viewable on Android, dunno about web.
- simonh 7y ago
  Apple doesn’t dig into third party apps to police their forums, chat channels and content. That is very clearly the responsibility of the app developers. More bullcrap excuses from Telegram. Come on. E2e disabled by default, phone numbers exposed by default. Channels stalked by moderators. It’s a joke.
  - gadders 7y ago
    My understanding was if Apple got a report about NSFW/hate speech/whatever channels, then they had to be hidden on the Apple version or else the app gets pulled from the app store. As to the rest of the app's quality, no idea. I use it on my phone and it seems OK, but I've not really dug into it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
k_vi 7y ago
Happened to us, we built a bot[1] to buy and sell bitcoins privately on Telegram. Someone messaged me saying that they would get a 'SCAM' label on our bot if we didn't pay them the ransom. We didn't comply and within a few days we got the label(guess they managed to get a lot of accounts on our bot to report scam). Their support team was unresponsive and it took around 3 weeks to get it resolved. Needless to say, our users lost trust and we couldn't risk this happening again. We still run the service(from request of a few existing users) but not actively promoting it. [1] https://t.me/megadealsbot https://t.me/megadealsbot
- berns 7y ago
  Read the Telegram faq, bots are publicly available, so they are subject to take down requests. Chats and group chats are not. https://telegram.org/faq#q-there-39s-illegal-content-on-telegram-how-do-i-take-it-down https://telegram.org/faq#q-there-39s-illegal-content-on-tele...
  - k_vi 7y ago
    Chats and group chats can also get the same SCAM label.
onebot 7y ago
I really like the idea of Matrix. Is it really secure though? Isn't E2E a newer feature?
- nsajko 7y ago
  End-to-end encryption is available, but not yet enabled by default for private rooms/direct messaging. See this for status, it seems it will soon be enabled by default: https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/6779 https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/6779 Also interesting is to see that it has been adopted by the French government: https://lwn.net/Articles/779331/ https://lwn.net/Articles/779331/
  - wrboyce 7y ago
    It is amazing how fast the goalposts can move to fit a narrative. So chats in Matrix are not E2E encrypted? The very thing Telegram is being called out for in this thread?
    - rahuldottech 7y ago
      If the chat isn't e2e, you are warned at every moment because the message text box that you type into prominently says "(unencrypted)". You can easily enable e2e for all conversations, and it will soon be the default. The data is on your own homeserver, and no one else has access to keys. Riot/matrix is vastly superior to telegram. Edit: also, telegram doesn't support e2e encrypted group chats, unlike riot.
    - latk 7y ago
      One of them does rather dishonest marketing, the other is upfront about capabilities and defaults. Telegram: we do E2E!* That makes us MORE SECURE than other messengers! Matrix: you can enable E2E if you want. * just not by default† † unless you count "E2E" security between your client and our servers,‡ which we'll confusingly highlight in our security documentation as if it were special†† ‡ you don't really need E2E anyway because we store your data in shell companies across the world †† I guess it is "special" because Telegram invented its own crypto algorithms? I'd like Telegram a lot more if they would stop with their bullshit claims, because it's actually a good service for some usecases. While reading the article I was hoping it was just written by a clueless Telegram fanboy, but reality is disappointing…
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
b2ccb2 7y ago
Time to push for Briar[1], again[2] [1] https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17695266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17695266
- eatbitseveryday 7y ago
  Sharing a URL with no meaningful supporting words isn’t pushing. What’s interesting, comparing to existing messengers?
  - b2ccb2 7y ago
    Sorry, you are right. That being said, it's a remarkable approach to messaging. E2E, decentralized, can be used over WiFi, Tor, Bluetooth (In case there is a blockage)[1]. Has been pentest reviewed[2] before the first release. Or to sum up: "Briar is a messaging app designed for activists, journalists, and anyone else who needs a safe, easy and robust way to communicate. Unlike traditional messaging tools such as email, Twitter or Telegram, Briar doesn't rely on a central server - messages are synchronized directly between the users' devices. If the Internet's down, Briar can sync via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, keeping the information flowing in a crisis. If the Internet's up, Briar can sync via the Tor network, protecting users and their relationships from surveillance." [1] https://briarproject.org/how-it-works/ https://briarproject.org/how-it-works/ [2] https://briarproject.org/raw/BRP-01-report.pdf https://briarproject.org/raw/BRP-01-report.pdf
- mmwelt 7y ago
  Seems one of its biggest problems is it's probably not possible to develop an iOS client: https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/issues/445 https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/issues/445
- coolgoy 7y ago
  Why you don't recommend Tox ? P2P software is always better than server depending software.
anonair 7y ago
> Furthermore, they frequently "ban" channels that they deem contain "inappropriate" or "adult" content. Clearly they're reviewed by either humans or AI of some sort. So... that makes me uncomfortable. If you are uncomfortable about content being read by humans -- (they claim) that only happens for public channels (open for anyone to read/search)
nyuszika7h 7y ago
> They're apparently "encrypted", but the keys are controlled by Telegram. Yes, but they take steps to ensure they cannot easily be forced to decrypt chats via a court order in a single country. From the Telegram FAQ: To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept in the same place as the data they protect. As a result, several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data. https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests > Furthermore, they frequently "ban" channels that they deem contain "inappropriate" or "adult" content. Clearly they're reviewed by either humans or AI of some sort. So... that makes me uncomfortable. AFAIK messages are only forwarded to Telegram support if they are reported by users. Chats spreading pornographic content are often banned on iOS due to the App Store guidelines (and in certain countries due to local laws), but illegal channels (e.g. CP) may be blocked globally. > Also, this means that anyone who has your phone number is told you're on the app and given your username, which you may not want for privacy reasons. This is not true anymore, a while ago they added new privacy settings that allow you to prevent others from finding you unless they are in your Telegram contact list. (Of course, this means if you don't want anyone in your phone's contacts to be able to find you on Telegram, you should deny the app contacts permission.)
- rahuldottech 7y ago
  > Yes, but they take steps to ensure they cannot easily be forced to decrypt chats via a court order in a single country. From the Telegram FAQ Again, this is just what they claim. Doesn't mean they don't read chats because they feel like it. And this doesn't mean that they won't cooperate with other entities in the future. Or that the keys won't get leaked. Your data being encrypted is pointless if it's stored one someone else's servers, and they have the keys to it.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  "several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data" How can we as users be certain that they wouldn't decrypt our chats anyway, contrary to their stated policy? As long as they have the technical capacity to decrypt my chats, I wouldn't feel secure on their platform, no matter what they say.
hackerbeat 7y ago
What about Signal?
- kf 7y ago
  Still trusted by both left coast technolibertariananarchists and Republicans in DC.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Do you have anything that you don't want a state level actor to know about? If not, it's fine. If you do, why are you using these sorts of technologies in the first place?
  - hackerbeat 7y ago
    Well, Snowden said that's the one (https://twitter.com/snowden/status/986277159252750336 https://twitter.com/snowden/status/986277159252750336) and he should know, right?
nostalgk 7y ago
"Telegram is banned in Russia" Really? I just went there recently, and nearly everyone used Telegram as their primary messaging application (other than Instagram)
- slackfan 7y ago
  Really. It's a constant fight between Telegram and the not-so-great Russian Firewall. There are actually public channels you can join in Telegram that run a tally of Telegram IPs blocked by Roskomnodzor.
  - nostalgk 7y ago
    We even had a speaker advertise a telegram channel for everyone I was there with to talk to each other, and the Russian audience laughed to his amusement. I didn't get the joke; kind of funny now. I still never ended up using it, have too many messaging apps as it is. It's really sad how much that can limit staying in touch with international friends though.
jszymborski 7y ago
I like Matrix+Riot.im, especially as a Slack killer and as a self-hosted option. But in terms of getting less technical people on board (frankly, often the sort to go to WA anyhow), I deeply suggest Signal.
dontbenebby 7y ago
It's my understanding that one reason people like Telegram is unlike Signal, you can use a username and hide your phone number. (Please correct me if this is incorrect, I don't know anyone who uses it so I stick to Signal) Signal is the gold standard for confidentiality, but forcing folks to disclose a phone number as a primary identifier has privacy issues.
- 333c 7y ago
  I use both telegram and signal and I find that the general user experience (syncing chats across devices, bots, rich media types) is better in telegram, at the expense of privacy.
- codedokode 7y ago
  Telegram also has native, non-Electron apps, for many platforms, could it be an advantage? It also has convenient public chats and "channels" (microblogs). It has support for proxy servers, allows sharing proxy servers and has traffic obfuscation which Signal (I assume) doesn't have. But for me Telegram and Signal are equally insecure because they don't allow anonymous accounts without a phone number. Using phone number for authentication is insecure because it is very easy to intercept SMS messages, especially if you are a telecom or the government. You better avoid using such messengers and not support them unless you want to provide your ID in future for registration on any website.
  - rmsaksida 7y ago
    Telegram supports two-step verification with a password. As long as you have that enabled, your account can't be hacked with SMS interception.
  - kitsunesoba 7y ago
    The native apps certainly help… Signal’s desktop app is pure afterthought and it shows. The other thing is that Telegram is just far more feature rich. It feels like what you’d like expect from a modern messaging app. Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about this all, though, is that third party devs can’t make their own Signal clients to try to improve the situation. If you want to use Signal, you have to take it with all of its warts, and that’s a hard sell.
randomer666 7y ago
They mostly ban content for Apple users because of Appstore restrictions. And they ban Isis group chats which is a good thing in my book.
coolgoy 7y ago
Better use P2P chat groups like Tox or Retroshare

seizeheures 7y ago

> Also, this means that anyone who has your phone number is told you're on the app and given your username, which you may not want for privacy reasons. You can disable that behavior in your privacy settings iirc

simonh 7y ago
And the reason this isn’t the default is?....
- wrboyce 7y ago
  Because most people are not privacy conscious and just want their messaging app to work (including having people know they are available to message on said platform).

paulcarroty 7y ago

> Furthermore, telegram forces you to link your account with a phone number, and that acts as the primary (or only) form of authentication, opening you up to sim-jacking. Linking phone or use it for 2FA should be like red light today. For Telegram, banking app, don't matter.

seizeheures 7y ago
Turns out you can also add a password to your telegram account to act as a form of 2FA, kinda odd but that's that I guess.
codedokode 7y ago
Because Telegram like many mobile apps, doesn't want anonymous users because you cannot sell them to advertisers.
nyuszika7h 7y ago
Actually, there's something interesting to note. If you enable 2FA, it's not possible to recover your account without either the password or the recovery email (if any). However, via SIM-jacking an attacker can still erase all data in your account and then take it over.

eptcyka 7y ago

I agree - Telegram's not ideal. But the reason they try and police adult content is because they're afraid of Apple booting them off the App store.

Aozi 7y ago
So Apple will boot an app that gives users the ability to send adult content to other users....? That is completely ridiculous and if that is the reason Telegram is policing adult content then Telegram is ran by idiots. You can use any IM app to share adult content, there are plenty of groups on Whatsapp sharing porn, there are plenty of groups in iMessage sharing porn, there are porn accounts on Instagram and twitter, hell the entire reason snapchat even exists is so that you can send self destructing nudes to people. The idea that an app will be banned due to content shared with people using the app, and not uploaded and/or hosted on some public website accessible to anyone (CP on tumblr) sounds completely ridiculous to me.
- monort 7y ago
  Telegram offers channel subscriptions, it's like a blog without comments. Apple will absolutely ban apps like that (think tumblr).
  - Aozi 7y ago
    No they won't. - Instagram is stock full of sexual content - A ton of cam models have private snapchat accounts where they share porn of themselves - Reddit is basically a cornucopia of porn - I can subscribe to a porn email list - Share nudes to a group of friends on Facebook or even SMS - I can join a hundred Discord channel to satisfy every single weird ass fetish I have, - I can outright buy porn from Amazon and have it home delivered in 30 minutes. And that's just from the top of my head. I'm sure you can find a metric ton of other apps that provide their users with easy access to sexual content. None of those apps will be banned for it since that is not the primary purpose of any of these apps. It's simply something that you're able to do with the tools provided. This is like banning all knives just because someone got stabbed. If your plan is to ban apps that provide access to pornographic content, then you're gonna have to do a lot of banning. Tumblr itself wasn't banned for porn, it was banned for child porn https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-child-pornography-removed-from-app-store https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-... I would also argue that a public blogsite where tagging and discovering new content is one of the key selling points of the platform, is very different from a Telegram channel where you need to specifically know the channel name to even join. As long as Telegram puts forth their best effort to eliminate illegal content from channels, they should be fine.

rorykoehler 7y ago

Many people have sent me stuff they want to keep secret on Telegram thinking they were in an end2end chat when they weren't. Terrible UX.

brnt 7y ago

I understand that with MTProto 2 they stepped away from their homecooked crypto and follow a more traditional scheme which on the surface looks OK. It's still not the default (you must enter into a 'secret chat'), but if you do, isn't it acceptable? Telegram now is one of the last remaining clients that has excellent device support, its available for everything.

Krasnol 7y ago
Does anybody have an idea why they don't make it default? Is there a cost involved? Any problems with it?
- knocte 7y ago
  It's possibly because secret chats need to be started interactively (you can't send a message until the other party has come online), and later cannot be shared among different devices (open the same channel in desktop|web|mobile), so it degrades UX.
  - bildung 7y ago
    Signal has only e2e and is able to offer synced chat between phone and desktop - the phone just sends the content to the desktop instance and vice versa.
    - knocte 7y ago
      Nice.
- hocuspocus 7y ago
  I imagine multi-device sync and group chats would be a lot more complex with E2E encryption.
  - Krasnol 7y ago
    Works with Signal flawlessly.

gadders 7y ago

>>Furthermore, they frequently "ban" channels that they deem contain "inappropriate" or "adult" content. Clearly they're reviewed by either humans or AI of some sort. So... I don't like them much. My understanding was that it isn't Telegram that bans them, but Apple that doesn't let certain channels be shown in the iOS app. Android and the web version show all channels.

rahuldottech 7y ago
Such channels aren't viewable on Android, dunno about web.
simonh 7y ago
Apple doesn’t dig into third party apps to police their forums, chat channels and content. That is very clearly the responsibility of the app developers. More bullcrap excuses from Telegram. Come on. E2e disabled by default, phone numbers exposed by default. Channels stalked by moderators. It’s a joke.
- gadders 7y ago
  My understanding was if Apple got a report about NSFW/hate speech/whatever channels, then they had to be hidden on the Apple version or else the app gets pulled from the app store. As to the rest of the app's quality, no idea. I use it on my phone and it seems OK, but I've not really dug into it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

k_vi 7y ago

Happened to us, we built a bot[1] to buy and sell bitcoins privately on Telegram. Someone messaged me saying that they would get a 'SCAM' label on our bot if we didn't pay them the ransom. We didn't comply and within a few days we got the label(guess they managed to get a lot of accounts on our bot to report scam). Their support team was unresponsive and it took around 3 weeks to get it resolved. Needless to say, our users lost trust and we couldn't risk this happening again. We still run the service(from request of a few existing users) but not actively promoting it. [1] https://t.me/megadealsbot https://t.me/megadealsbot

berns 7y ago
Read the Telegram faq, bots are publicly available, so they are subject to take down requests. Chats and group chats are not. https://telegram.org/faq#q-there-39s-illegal-content-on-telegram-how-do-i-take-it-down https://telegram.org/faq#q-there-39s-illegal-content-on-tele...
- k_vi 7y ago
  Chats and group chats can also get the same SCAM label.

onebot 7y ago

I really like the idea of Matrix. Is it really secure though? Isn't E2E a newer feature?

nsajko 7y ago
End-to-end encryption is available, but not yet enabled by default for private rooms/direct messaging. See this for status, it seems it will soon be enabled by default: https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/6779 https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/6779 Also interesting is to see that it has been adopted by the French government: https://lwn.net/Articles/779331/ https://lwn.net/Articles/779331/
- wrboyce 7y ago
  It is amazing how fast the goalposts can move to fit a narrative. So chats in Matrix are not E2E encrypted? The very thing Telegram is being called out for in this thread?
  - rahuldottech 7y ago
    If the chat isn't e2e, you are warned at every moment because the message text box that you type into prominently says "(unencrypted)". You can easily enable e2e for all conversations, and it will soon be the default. The data is on your own homeserver, and no one else has access to keys. Riot/matrix is vastly superior to telegram. Edit: also, telegram doesn't support e2e encrypted group chats, unlike riot.
  - latk 7y ago
    One of them does rather dishonest marketing, the other is upfront about capabilities and defaults. Telegram: we do E2E!* That makes us MORE SECURE than other messengers! Matrix: you can enable E2E if you want. * just not by default† † unless you count "E2E" security between your client and our servers,‡ which we'll confusingly highlight in our security documentation as if it were special†† ‡ you don't really need E2E anyway because we store your data in shell companies across the world †† I guess it is "special" because Telegram invented its own crypto algorithms? I'd like Telegram a lot more if they would stop with their bullshit claims, because it's actually a good service for some usecases. While reading the article I was hoping it was just written by a clueless Telegram fanboy, but reality is disappointing…

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

b2ccb2 7y ago

Time to push for Briar[1], again[2] [1] https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17695266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17695266

eatbitseveryday 7y ago
Sharing a URL with no meaningful supporting words isn’t pushing. What’s interesting, comparing to existing messengers?
- b2ccb2 7y ago
  Sorry, you are right. That being said, it's a remarkable approach to messaging. E2E, decentralized, can be used over WiFi, Tor, Bluetooth (In case there is a blockage)[1]. Has been pentest reviewed[2] before the first release. Or to sum up: "Briar is a messaging app designed for activists, journalists, and anyone else who needs a safe, easy and robust way to communicate. Unlike traditional messaging tools such as email, Twitter or Telegram, Briar doesn't rely on a central server - messages are synchronized directly between the users' devices. If the Internet's down, Briar can sync via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, keeping the information flowing in a crisis. If the Internet's up, Briar can sync via the Tor network, protecting users and their relationships from surveillance." [1] https://briarproject.org/how-it-works/ https://briarproject.org/how-it-works/ [2] https://briarproject.org/raw/BRP-01-report.pdf https://briarproject.org/raw/BRP-01-report.pdf
mmwelt 7y ago
Seems one of its biggest problems is it's probably not possible to develop an iOS client: https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/issues/445 https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/issues/445
coolgoy 7y ago
Why you don't recommend Tox ? P2P software is always better than server depending software.

anonair 7y ago

> Furthermore, they frequently "ban" channels that they deem contain "inappropriate" or "adult" content. Clearly they're reviewed by either humans or AI of some sort. So... that makes me uncomfortable. If you are uncomfortable about content being read by humans -- (they claim) that only happens for public channels (open for anyone to read/search)

nyuszika7h 7y ago

> They're apparently "encrypted", but the keys are controlled by Telegram. Yes, but they take steps to ensure they cannot easily be forced to decrypt chats via a court order in a single country. From the Telegram FAQ: To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept in the same place as the data they protect. As a result, several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data. https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests > Furthermore, they frequently "ban" channels that they deem contain "inappropriate" or "adult" content. Clearly they're reviewed by either humans or AI of some sort. So... that makes me uncomfortable. AFAIK messages are only forwarded to Telegram support if they are reported by users. Chats spreading pornographic content are often banned on iOS due to the App Store guidelines (and in certain countries due to local laws), but illegal channels (e.g. CP) may be blocked globally. > Also, this means that anyone who has your phone number is told you're on the app and given your username, which you may not want for privacy reasons. This is not true anymore, a while ago they added new privacy settings that allow you to prevent others from finding you unless they are in your Telegram contact list. (Of course, this means if you don't want anyone in your phone's contacts to be able to find you on Telegram, you should deny the app contacts permission.)

rahuldottech 7y ago
> Yes, but they take steps to ensure they cannot easily be forced to decrypt chats via a court order in a single country. From the Telegram FAQ Again, this is just what they claim. Doesn't mean they don't read chats because they feel like it. And this doesn't mean that they won't cooperate with other entities in the future. Or that the keys won't get leaked. Your data being encrypted is pointless if it's stored one someone else's servers, and they have the keys to it.
pmoriarty 7y ago
"several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data" How can we as users be certain that they wouldn't decrypt our chats anyway, contrary to their stated policy? As long as they have the technical capacity to decrypt my chats, I wouldn't feel secure on their platform, no matter what they say.

hackerbeat 7y ago

What about Signal?

kf 7y ago
Still trusted by both left coast technolibertariananarchists and Republicans in DC.
bilbo0s 7y ago
Do you have anything that you don't want a state level actor to know about? If not, it's fine. If you do, why are you using these sorts of technologies in the first place?
- hackerbeat 7y ago
  Well, Snowden said that's the one (https://twitter.com/snowden/status/986277159252750336 https://twitter.com/snowden/status/986277159252750336) and he should know, right?

nostalgk 7y ago

"Telegram is banned in Russia" Really? I just went there recently, and nearly everyone used Telegram as their primary messaging application (other than Instagram)

slackfan 7y ago
Really. It's a constant fight between Telegram and the not-so-great Russian Firewall. There are actually public channels you can join in Telegram that run a tally of Telegram IPs blocked by Roskomnodzor.
- nostalgk 7y ago
  We even had a speaker advertise a telegram channel for everyone I was there with to talk to each other, and the Russian audience laughed to his amusement. I didn't get the joke; kind of funny now. I still never ended up using it, have too many messaging apps as it is. It's really sad how much that can limit staying in touch with international friends though.

jszymborski 7y ago

I like Matrix+Riot.im, especially as a Slack killer and as a self-hosted option. But in terms of getting less technical people on board (frankly, often the sort to go to WA anyhow), I deeply suggest Signal.

dontbenebby 7y ago

It's my understanding that one reason people like Telegram is unlike Signal, you can use a username and hide your phone number. (Please correct me if this is incorrect, I don't know anyone who uses it so I stick to Signal) Signal is the gold standard for confidentiality, but forcing folks to disclose a phone number as a primary identifier has privacy issues.

333c 7y ago
I use both telegram and signal and I find that the general user experience (syncing chats across devices, bots, rich media types) is better in telegram, at the expense of privacy.
codedokode 7y ago
Telegram also has native, non-Electron apps, for many platforms, could it be an advantage? It also has convenient public chats and "channels" (microblogs). It has support for proxy servers, allows sharing proxy servers and has traffic obfuscation which Signal (I assume) doesn't have. But for me Telegram and Signal are equally insecure because they don't allow anonymous accounts without a phone number. Using phone number for authentication is insecure because it is very easy to intercept SMS messages, especially if you are a telecom or the government. You better avoid using such messengers and not support them unless you want to provide your ID in future for registration on any website.
- rmsaksida 7y ago
  Telegram supports two-step verification with a password. As long as you have that enabled, your account can't be hacked with SMS interception.
- kitsunesoba 7y ago
  The native apps certainly help… Signal’s desktop app is pure afterthought and it shows. The other thing is that Telegram is just far more feature rich. It feels like what you’d like expect from a modern messaging app. Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about this all, though, is that third party devs can’t make their own Signal clients to try to improve the situation. If you want to use Signal, you have to take it with all of its warts, and that’s a hard sell.

randomer666 7y ago

They mostly ban content for Apple users because of Appstore restrictions. And they ban Isis group chats which is a good thing in my book.

coolgoy 7y ago

Better use P2P chat groups like Tox or Retroshare