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> It's basic, but it's valid. I wrote basic framing. It is a valid and effective marketing technique but not something you should rely on in a technical discu

> It's basic, but it's valid. I wrote basic framing. It is a valid and effective marketing technique but not something you should rely on in a technical discussion. > if whether it's E2E-encrypted matters in your threat model, then whether it's E2E-encrypted still matters in your threat model even if other aspects of the system are secure. Then we agree :-) I've been communicating over email, irc and lots of other channels that were not E2E-encrypted for years and I still have to. I'll have to live with the fact that my bank, my government and a number of others have unencrypted, realtime access to far more sensitive data than Telegram. The fact that someone can read my Telegram messages consisting of perfectly innocent photos is way down on my list as long as they who do it has a lot to lose by doing it ;-) (I.e. if you had access it would be a problem. If any serious agency has access they will never use it against me because then they give away that they have the capability. In the same way Telegram has everything to lose by letting employees snoop. Same as Google: I do not fear them snooping my mail, I fear their AI will kill my account and no one will tell me why.) > Citation? I don't remember it happening that way at all; Telegram marketed themselves by attacking WhatsApp on a couple of minor vulnerabilities in side features like video handling (which was legitimate in some ways, but extremely hypocritical given the bigger weaknesses in Telegram's own implementation). If message text was readable that would have been a much bigger deal. I've followed Telegram quite closely so I am fairly certain about their marketing message early on. As you can see it also put them in a bad light so thats something too. I've been unable to find references for the point about just being encoded, not encrypted so take that with a grain of salt for now. Some evidence can probably be found in an old unofficial client repo or someone who wrote one of those can confirm. I might be wrong but remember this was back in 2009. It was a whole different world back then. I used and liked WhatsApp despite all this because just like with Telegram perfect security didn't matter for the kind of communication I have on messengers back then either.

skinkestek 5y ago
Ok, so I had try one more time to look this up, and here is what Wikipedia says. (They also point to where it was written originally and an archive of the source.): > WhatsApp was initially criticized for its lack of encryption, sending information as plaintext.[198] Encryption was first added in May 2012.[199][200][201] End-to-end encryption was only fully implemented in April 2016 after a two-year process. from the "Security and Privacy" section of :https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp Happy now? Again: this wasn't thought to be a big deal back in 2009 and I don't want to beat them up over it. The person I wrote to wrote: > If message text was readable that would have been a much bigger deal. For anyone who has read so far, keep in mind such rules only apply to Telegram ;-)
- lmm 5y ago
  You wrote "Remember, when Telegram came around WhatsApp was un-encrypted. Not point-to-point encrypted, just encoded." Given that Telegram was first released in 2013, your own quote contradicts that.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    ok, now I admit you might have caught me in a mistake. Thanks! I like to get corrected. Edit: and have my upvote. Now: can you admit that WhatsApp was unencrypted and you were wrong?
    - lmm 5y ago
      WhatsApp was unencrypted in its early days, sure. As you said, 2009 was a different time. I'll admit that 2012 was significantly later than I expected, and FWIW that does reduce my trust in WhatsApp (who I've never been the biggest fan of in any case). But I think my original point still stands, because at no point has Telegram been a more secure alternative to mainstream messenger options (such as WhatsApp), despite their marketing and branding being security/privacy-oriented and their "breakout moment" being a targeted, hypocritical call-out of WhatsApp security. Yes, I'm holding them to a higher standard than WhatsApp. But I think that's completely fair given that security and privacy is Telegram's supposed selling point, whereas WhatsApp never positioned itself as anything more than a way to send messages to each other. If Telegram had come first then I could understand why people would keep using it. But I don't get why anyone would switch to it (except for the owned-by-Facebook thing I guess, which sure, is much more of a question about what your threat model is).
      - skinkestek 5y ago
        > But I think that's completely fair given that security and privacy is Telegram's supposed selling point, whereas WhatsApp never positioned itself as anything more than a way to send messages to each other. Why don't you look at discussions here and see why people use Telegram? Many, maybe most of us don't think of it as specially secure. If you ask why people use it they'll tell you it is fast, stable, almost bug free, well designed and everyone else in their group uses it. I've yet to see anyone using cryptographic security as a selling point. Telegrams biggest claim to fame security wise is their censorship resistance and that they get away saying they've never give authorities one bit of user data, year after year. If they had a secret deal with anyone that should soon become obvious. Edit: > and FWIW that does reduce my trust in WhatsApp (who I've never been the biggest fan of in any case). I'm consistent here: I liked them better back then when they were a scrappy startup trying to do good in a world of ads and tracking. Technical issues can be fixed, as they have done. The incentives formed by being bought for $17bn (or 19 or whatever?) by Facebook, they cannot easily be fixed. Yes, messages are now E2E-encrypted but we now have thousands of people working trying to exploit metadata etc instead of 50 guys trying to avoid that.

skinkestek 5y ago

Ok, so I had try one more time to look this up, and here is what Wikipedia says. (They also point to where it was written originally and an archive of the source.): > WhatsApp was initially criticized for its lack of encryption, sending information as plaintext.[198] Encryption was first added in May 2012.[199][200][201] End-to-end encryption was only fully implemented in April 2016 after a two-year process. from the "Security and Privacy" section of :https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp Happy now? Again: this wasn't thought to be a big deal back in 2009 and I don't want to beat them up over it. The person I wrote to wrote: > If message text was readable that would have been a much bigger deal. For anyone who has read so far, keep in mind such rules only apply to Telegram ;-)

lmm 5y ago
You wrote "Remember, when Telegram came around WhatsApp was un-encrypted. Not point-to-point encrypted, just encoded." Given that Telegram was first released in 2013, your own quote contradicts that.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  ok, now I admit you might have caught me in a mistake. Thanks! I like to get corrected. Edit: and have my upvote. Now: can you admit that WhatsApp was unencrypted and you were wrong?
  - lmm 5y ago
    WhatsApp was unencrypted in its early days, sure. As you said, 2009 was a different time. I'll admit that 2012 was significantly later than I expected, and FWIW that does reduce my trust in WhatsApp (who I've never been the biggest fan of in any case). But I think my original point still stands, because at no point has Telegram been a more secure alternative to mainstream messenger options (such as WhatsApp), despite their marketing and branding being security/privacy-oriented and their "breakout moment" being a targeted, hypocritical call-out of WhatsApp security. Yes, I'm holding them to a higher standard than WhatsApp. But I think that's completely fair given that security and privacy is Telegram's supposed selling point, whereas WhatsApp never positioned itself as anything more than a way to send messages to each other. If Telegram had come first then I could understand why people would keep using it. But I don't get why anyone would switch to it (except for the owned-by-Facebook thing I guess, which sure, is much more of a question about what your threat model is).
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      > But I think that's completely fair given that security and privacy is Telegram's supposed selling point, whereas WhatsApp never positioned itself as anything more than a way to send messages to each other. Why don't you look at discussions here and see why people use Telegram? Many, maybe most of us don't think of it as specially secure. If you ask why people use it they'll tell you it is fast, stable, almost bug free, well designed and everyone else in their group uses it. I've yet to see anyone using cryptographic security as a selling point. Telegrams biggest claim to fame security wise is their censorship resistance and that they get away saying they've never give authorities one bit of user data, year after year. If they had a secret deal with anyone that should soon become obvious. Edit: > and FWIW that does reduce my trust in WhatsApp (who I've never been the biggest fan of in any case). I'm consistent here: I liked them better back then when they were a scrappy startup trying to do good in a world of ads and tracking. Technical issues can be fixed, as they have done. The incentives formed by being bought for $17bn (or 19 or whatever?) by Facebook, they cannot easily be fixed. Yes, messages are now E2E-encrypted but we now have thousands of people working trying to exploit metadata etc instead of 50 guys trying to avoid that.