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Egypt Blocks Access to Telegram
- aorth 6y agoOn a related note, people should download and run OONI Probe to monitor and record censorship on networks around the world. OONI Probe has tests for Telegram and WhatsApp, as well as middle boxes, blocked websites, etc.
- ignoramous 6y agoLink: https://ooni.org/ https://ooni.org/
- encom 6y agoSaved you a click: It's an Electron app.
- janandonly 6y agoDoes it matter what platform it is build on?
- encom 6y agoTo me, yes. I avoid Electron like the plague. I know others feel the same way, so think of it as community service. Javascript-on-desktop arguments are probably already taking up gigabytes of space in the HN database, so I'll just say it's for all the usual reasons.
- cbluth 6y agoyoud be surprised how well text compresses
- titanomachy 6y agoEspecially text with a lot of repetition.
- aquadrop 6y agoThere's also a lot of people who don't feel the same way and I think you know it. So probably no need for "saved the click" part in your community service.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 6y agoPeople not liking electron isn't an affront to the people who do. Let's not police people's speech.
- jorvi 6y agoIt’s not JavaScript-on-desktop that’s the problem- this was a suspicion often cast at Gnome’s bad performance, until Canonical got involved, started fixing performance issues, and it was discovered that most of those issues stemmed from inefficient waits and stuff. The reason why Electron apps gets such a bad rap (and I fully agree, I hate them too) is because they carry basically an entire Chromium with them in addition to whatever you wanted to accomplish. HN is pretty split on Electron afaik because whilst it killed native apps for Windows and Mac, it has brought a lot of them to Linux.
- encom 6y agoPrecisely. I would hate Electron less, if it shipped as a runtime like Java. Though I still think shoehorning web tech onto the desktop is stupid.
- antihero 6y agoHa ha look at me I am on Hacker News I don't like Electron because I am so smart ha ha.
- 0xdeadb00f 6y agoMemes aside: thanks, you really did save me a click.
- hiq 6y agoThere's an open-source Android app which is published on F-Droid.
- aorth 6y agoOh! I had no idea it there was an Electron app for desktop. I've been using it on Android for years. I make a point to run it on wireless and mobile connections in every country I travel on. Also, I've made pull requests to https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists with new URLs that are blocked in certain countries when I find them.
- diggan 6y agoShort quick start for the lazy ones (also, no Electron so everyone rejoices): $ wget https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases/download/v3.0.8/ooniprobe_v3.0.8_linux_amd64.tar.gz $ # sha512 => 4f215347022028cf5328446d15e59f2141d1a41e59110c0b85c67b711953d115 ooniprobe_v3.0.8_linux_amd64.tar.gz $ tar xfv ooniprobe_v3.0.8_linux_amd64.tar.gz $ # Move to $PATH $ mv ooniprobe ~/bin $ # Add crontab to run daily $ (crontab -l 2>/dev/null; echo "$(( ( RANDOM % 60 ) + 1 )) $(( ( RANDOM % 24 ) + 1 )) * * * ooniprobe run") | crontab - Mostly just stolen directly from the readme of the CLI probe: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli#ooni-probe-cli https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli#ooni-probe-cli Also, make sure you're not on a network where someone will report you for visiting the "wrong" websites. It does requests to a lot of websites you don't want to be caught with in your history.
- d0mine 6y agoWhy can't it be just $ curl -L https://ooni.org/install | sh similar to https://nixos.org/download.html#nix-quick-install https://nixos.org/download.html#nix-quick-install
- diggan 6y agoThat'd be a great addition! Give it a try and implement it: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/new/master https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/new/master Don't forget to think about all the different OSes and the way the handle scheduling!
- smegcicle 6y agoI remember reading something about a ban-evading technology that telegram used, that 'happened' to be ready just in time for russia to 'ban' it two years ago?
- coolspot 6y agoAs I recall it, telegram was indeed banned, and was coming on and off line as it jumped servers among major cloud providers, resulting in major part of AWS and Azure IPs being banned as a collateral damage. Then Telegram team came up with smart improvements to the protocol, like delivering individual IPv6 endpoint for each user via invisible push notifications. https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/17/17246150/telegram-russia-ban https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/17/17246150/telegram-russia-... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-telegram-ipaddresses-idUSKBN1HO1WM https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-telegram-ipaddress...
- stareatgoats 6y ago> 'happened' (...) 'ban' I'd like to understand the use of inverted commas here, as if things were not what they seemed. What gives?
- smegcicle 6y agothe idea is that telegram is controlled opposition, with russia making a big show of banning it (ip blocking hugh suafs of aws) just in time for countermeasures to be completed other background is that telegram was started by the same guy who founded vkontakt, russia's facebook, and that it advertises itself as having secure e2e chats, which are not default and are difficult to use
- 2Gkashmiri 6y agomeh. this is nothing. indian occupied kashmir has now been under a high speed internet gag since august 2019 and it is now been extended till november 2020. https://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/latest-news/govt-extends-high-speed-internet-ban-in-jammu-and-kashmir-till-nov-12/ https://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/latest-news/govt-extends... http://www.jkhome.nic.in/114(TSTS)of2020.pdf http://www.jkhome.nic.in/114(TSTS)of2020.pdf this is the direct link to the government order http://www.jkhome.nic.in/orders.html http://www.jkhome.nic.in/orders.html the government website listing orders of internet gag.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> this is nothing Misery isn’t finite. The situation in Kashmir isn’t lessened by that in Egypt. This kind of off topic mud slinging is a terrible way to build support for a cause.
- 2Gkashmiri 6y agonot mud slinging. i should have put a "/s" at the end if you didn't get it in the first instance. sigh
- ignoramous 6y ago> Egyptian authorities have blocked access to IP addresses of the application. Good thing that the Telegram client supports proxying traffic over SOCKS5 and MTProto (custom protocol). On the server-side, in the past, they successfully employed domain-fronting and recycling through multiple IPs to bypass the Russian firewall. The client does its own DNS resolution over HTTPS and so DNS blocks are already ineffective.
- grishka 6y agoIt's also capable of masking its proxy traffic as TLS. This works so well you could actually have a web server behind it that would still work through the same port for a regular TLS client.
- vbezhenar 6y agoYou can also achieve it with something like sslh and use ssh, https, OpenVPN on the same port. Pretty cool thing. But probably vulnerable to DPI.
- qwerty456127 6y agoSo I'm probably not going to Egypt as Telegram is the main (in fact - the only) way communicate to members of my family remotely.
- dirtnugget 6y agoThere are plenty of ways to proxy the traffic. Apparently Telegram has it built in but for anything else I usually use ProtonVPN
- ku-man 6y agoYes, but such a display of resourcefulness will grant you a visit to the interrogation room of the local intelligence agency, in case you or one of your contacts is ever found with a working telegram app.
- dhoe 6y agoProtonVPN uses OpenVPN, right? That's been blocked in Egypt for some time. I had good success with Wireguard, which they didn't block (as of a year ago).
- dirtnugget 6y agoReally? Last time I was there around a year ago I was able to connect Proton. I believe the paid plan of ProtonVPN also offers TOR connections. Not a specialist on this, though.
- tinus_hn 6y agoThe traffic over your phones data connection is encrypted and routed directly through your provider in your own country. So these filters don’t affect it.
- mnd999 6y agoTypically the way to prevent people doing this is to make data roaming charges astronomically high.
- qwerty456127 6y ago> It is noteworthy that last September “Masaar” had published a web page declaring that the authorities have blocked 596 websites and 32 alternative links since May 2017. It is even more noteworthy that the Masaar site by the link says they blocked 116 news sites, 349 anonymization sites, 6 e-commerce sites, 11 culture sites, 8 blogging platforms etc and... just one terrorist site :-)
- janandonly 6y agoSo when will chat apps finally adapt to using TOR or I2P or Scuttlebut or any protocol that can not so easily be blocked?
- deepstack 6y agoUnfortunately unless there are financial incentive to do that it will not be adopted. Maybe try to get the porn industry to adopt these services first, maybe others will follow.
- ffpip 6y agoTelegram has proxies built in. You can activate it with a tap.
- arminiusreturns 6y agoThis reminded me of something I hadn't thought of in a long time. In the earlier days of bitcoin, there was a chat app that was using encrypted messages on the blockchain... I just spent ~5mins searching for it but can't remember the actual name. Is there anything else using the blockchain for chat?
- dmantis 6y agoI think you talk about bitmessage. It doesn't use blockchain, though, which is kinda useless, there is no need to store messages permanently without the way to remove them. These systems mostly use blockchain as PKI or similar to bitcoin mempools with public crypto, but not store messages on blockchain.
- arminiusreturns 6y agoAh yes, seems I was misremembering. Thanks for the info.
- emptysongglass 6y agoCould it have been Status? [1] [1] https://status.im/private-messenger/ https://status.im/private-messenger/
- sschueller 6y agoIs whatsapp blocked? If not, the question is why since that is supposed to be end to end encrypted.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoI have no idea how the block works, but I learned that WhatsApp video calls are blocked in the United Arab Emirates, along with almost every other video chat app. There’s a UAE sponsored app called Totok that works, although it is/was removed from the Apple Store for privacy reasons. Recently they started allowing Zoom calls to go through. Further reading: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/26/coronavirus-lockdown-uae-residents-call-for-end-to-whatsapp-skype-ban.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/26/coronavirus-lockdown-uae-res...
- hiq 6y agoIt's better to ask why Telegram was blocked, and I think it's often been because of their channels: https://telegram.org/tour/channels https://telegram.org/tour/channels In this case it's more relevant to ask why Twitter or Facebook haven't been blocked (if they haven't). I think WA has a similar feature ("broadcast") but not as widely used (since it is limited to 256 people).
- smileybarry 6y agoWhatsApp broadcasts act a little differently than Telegram channels; they end up as normal messages in a 1-on-1 chat with each recipient (with a megaphone icon next to it), so it's not something you can join or even have as a separate section. WhatsApp groups can be set to act like channels, however, by changing permissions to allow just group admins to send messages.
- ddingus 6y agoThis. Channels are pretty much news feeds of note. And they scale from a community, through to global classes of people.
- s_dev 6y agoI would normally opt for Signal because it's open source. This is inherently more trustworthy. The fact that so many authoritarian governments ban/are hostile to Telegram suggests they actually do have some integrity.
- jdu9 6y agoYour comment is misleading: Telegram is open source (Desktop, iOS, Android), but the server isn't. It would certainly be nice to run your own Telegram server, sure. IMHO the only good argument against Telegram is that direct messages don't use end-to-end encryption by default.
- input_sh 6y ago...except Telegram X, their alternative Android client. > IMHO the only good argument against Telegram is that direct messages don't use end-to-end encryption by default. I'd add two more: 1. End-to-end encryption being device-specific. Example: if you start a secret chat from your phone, you can't view it on your other devices. Other end-to-end encrypted solutions don't have this drawback. 2. End-to-end encryption being available only in one-to-one communications. Take this with a grain of salt, but I don't think it's available at all in group chats and channels.
- leetcrew 6y agotaken individually, these all seem like minor nitpicks. but together, they make for a pretty high-friction E2E experience on telegram. the first time I try to have a "secret chat" with someone, it's often the first time they realize that telegram isn't E2E by default or that it even has that feature! I have to wonder about the design decisions made here. it seems pretty obvious that the combination of limitations is going to result in the vast majority of messages not being E2E. in practice, "secret chat" on telegram is only worth the trouble when both participants understand they are doing something shady.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
- godelzilla 6y agoThe united states supports and defends the worst tyrannies on the planet.
- KoftaBob 6y agoWhy don't messaging apps like Telegram use P2P, wouldn't that make it much harder to "block" people from using it, if the connection is directly between two devices?
- ajconway 6y agoLeaving aside the fact that p2p is certainly not feasible in mobile devices, something being p2p or federated does not improve the service's ability to evade censorship. How would you block a p2p network like TOR? Just ban all the entry points. You can use proxies to access those, but then you can use the same proxies to access a centralized service. How do you ban a federated network like Matrix or e-mail? Ban all the servers you can find, then you're back to proxies.
- KoftaBob 6y agoWhy isn’t P2P chat feasible for mobile devices? Genuinely curious.
- ajconway 6y agoApps on mobile devices are generally unable to maintain network connections while not in focus.
- KoftaBob 6y agoIs this due to the nature of iOS and Android and them not allowing apps to do that, or is there another limitation at play here?
- ajconway 6y agoiOS does not allow apps to be kept alive in background at all. On Android you can (mostly) keep an app open in background, but you should not, as it affects battery life. Of course, another issue is that no device is always online, so you can't base the system entirely on devices communicating with each other peer-to-peer. You want to at least have supernodes. When you do, it effectively becomes a "dynamic federated network".