5 ms·

Telegram has had all of these features for a while… too bad it isn't as secure as signal or it'd be perfect, since it's also written in a real GUI toolkit and p

by LtWorf 3y ago

Telegram has had all of these features for a while… too bad it isn't as secure as signal or it'd be perfect, since it's also written in a real GUI toolkit and present in distribution repositories. I do wonder how telegram and signal are planning to finance it long term. Telegram is adding absurd paid features like exclusive animations, which won't earn nearly enough to cover the costs. I wonder where signal is about keeping the servers up, since they hate federation so much.

contact9879 3y ago
You're in luck because Signal had a whole blog post about long term financing a couple months ago. https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/
- nicce 3y ago
  Good reminder that need to make a new donation.
  - brewdad 3y ago
    I kick in $5 a month because that's about what I figure self-hosting a messaging service would cost me. I don't want the hassle of self-hosting and I trust Signal more than the other remote hosted options.
celdon25 3y ago
Don’t worry, telegram is now gatekeeping certain privacy settings behind the premium subscription like it’s 2003. They also make it difficult to hide your pseudo identity from your phone contacts. I’ve had all the “discover contacts” settings turned off, and simply reinstalling the app caused people to be given my username without my consent. Settings somehow magically switched themselves back on and I couldn’t turn them off until after the damage was done. There was no confirmation prompt. Pretty sure this happened to me more than once. Please don’t ever compare Telegram with Signal.
- LtWorf 3y ago
  Come on signal until today had no way to keep the phone number private. Which is the topic here.
  - fidelramos 3y ago
    Because unlike Telegram they strive to do things in a privacy-respecting way, and that's hard to get right.
    - guappa 3y ago
      Wasn't the saying "perfect is the enemy of good"? While waiting to have it perfect you don't have it good either.
- kome 3y ago
  i've been using Telegram on and off since 2015 or so, and i've never shared my contacts. never! re-installing Telegram has never changed that setting. The real problem with cellphones is that a lot of privacy-threatening issues are literally one fat finger away. And clearly, that's a feature, not a bug. That's why I prefer to work and message on my laptop anyway. but again, Telegram has been, in many practical ways, much more privacy-oriented than all the other messengers, exactly because you don't have to share your phone number to participate in groups and chats.
- hanniabu 3y ago
  > telegram is now gatekeeping certain privacy settings behind the premium subscription Such as?
  - Systemling0815 3y ago
    Last online status
  - vld_chk 3y ago
    For example, now you can’t restrict who can send you a message unless you have a premium. Also they added a “feature” that premium users can bypass non-premium users privacy setting “last seen and online” and TG will tell that info regardless of your choice unless you are premium too.
vld_chk 3y ago
Telegram and Signal solves very different types of privacy issues. Telegram is good, as you mention, to be relatively private in groups/chats/channels without a need to expose neither your phone nor even a nickname (unless you live in autocratic countries — will come to this later). But it comes with costs. First, their p2p communication is not e2e encrypted by default. Not to say that all comments/group chats are not encrypted too, unlike let’s say WA. Second, Telegram API. It gives too much information. You can do a lot with it: read history, track changes of usernames, etc. For example, it is quite easy to obtain an internal user ID and there are black market services and databases where they promise to connect that ID with phone number if that account ever had privacy settings switched off in the past. Claimed that they kind of scrape all accounts and pair ID for those where privacy settings set poorly. Even if you change it later — your internal ID and that scrape will state forever. Third, Telegram was funded by Russian government since Durov had issues with SEC. He raised money from different Russian state-owned banks like VTB, issued bonds which are traded in Saint-Petersburg stock exchange, and even take some money directly from Russian government though a Qatar proxy-company. Not to say, that there are cases when TG was involved in criminal charges against people (the most famous one is story with Ryanair plane being forced to land in Minsk to arrest Lukashenko’s critique) and it was never directly addressed and explained by company how exactly those people was caught and how company protect against “SIM card replacement” cases (Signal at least inform me everytime my peer logged to new device). Selecting between Signal with AFAIK no known cases of charges in dictatorship countries like Russia, funded by non-profitable charity, and TG without default e2e encryption, public API and Russian-state funding, is quite obvious for me.
- grayfaced 3y ago
  It was also banned and blocked in Russia for several years. It was only unbanned when they agreed to cooperate with security services. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Telegram_in_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Telegram_in_Russia
  - vld_chk 3y ago
    More to this “lucky coincidence” it was unbanned exactly when Durov failed in trouble with SEC and raised Russian-state money to solve his problems. Around same time almost all official Russian institutions open TG accounts and Russian Parliament (if we can call that silly thing like this) representatives was saying like “we solved all problems with them”. When war started, and Russia banned a lot of services like FB, they created list of communication platforms they have questions about loyalty and cooperation with Russian government. TG was not on that list and through the whole war the only issue was about Telegraph — supplementary platform to publish long notes. AFAIK there was 0 questions or criticisms to TG in those 2 years. As for me, it says a lot
snotrockets 3y ago
Telegram isn't a messaging service. It's a social network with a messenger UI. Quite ingenious, if you'd ask me, but a social network and a private messenger can't really be reconciled into a single product.
- AnonHP 3y ago
  What would you classify Signal as, with its stickers, cryptocurrency (MobileCoin), etc.?
  - hunter2_ 3y ago
    I think "social" in this context refers to frictionless friend finding, not stickers. Good privacy involves a certain level of friction, with PGP verification being a classic example of the UX problem space.
  - snotrockets 3y ago
    Signal is one-to-one or many-to-many. Telegram is mostly few-to-many.
Faizan711 3y ago
Why do you say that Telegram isn't as secure as signal?
- jknutson 3y ago
  I’m not who you replied to, but I agree with his sentiment about signal being superior to telegram in terms of security (or more specifically, privacy). For me, there’s two big reasons for this: Signal chats are E2E at all times, while Telegram is only E2E when you explicitly create a “secret chat” with whoever you’re conversing with. I don’t fault Telegram too much for this, because they still provide the option to use E2E for everything, but Signal gets brownie points in my book because they just do it by default without getting in the way of the User. Secondly, as far as I know, Telegram uses their own in house encryption techniques as opposed to industry standards. I am not at all knowledgeable about encryption or cryptography— I only know what’s required of me in my job (basically the bare minimum), and so I don’t actually know whether this is anything of serious concern. It could very well be that Telegram’s encryption techniques are just as effective as the established norms, but I do see the general consensus trending towards “roll your own encryption = bad, use established norms = good”, which is primarily what I am basing my opinion on here. To further detract from my own point, it actually seems like Telegram might be using “established norms” for encryption nowadays anyways [1], although I couldn’t really tell from the brief description I read on Wikipedia. Overall, I think Telegram is perceived as being less secure than Signal primarily because of the reputation Telegram has for implementing their own in house encryption techniques, even if they don’t use those techniques anymore— their name has become associated with their known history of using ad hoc encryption. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Architecture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Architec...
  - _Algernon_ 3y ago
    Also, Telegram does not even have e2ee as an option for group chats while Signal does. That's a pretty big deal!
- LtWorf 3y ago
  Chats are not e2e encrypted by default, they are just encrypted in transit. However this allows chats to be synced across many devices, so it is very very convenient. Telegram has e2e encrypted chats but only on mobile and not on desktop for some reason.

by LtWorf 3y ago

contact9879 3y ago

You're in luck because Signal had a whole blog post about long term financing a couple months ago. https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/

nicce 3y ago
Good reminder that need to make a new donation.
- brewdad 3y ago
  I kick in $5 a month because that's about what I figure self-hosting a messaging service would cost me. I don't want the hassle of self-hosting and I trust Signal more than the other remote hosted options.

celdon25 3y ago

Don’t worry, telegram is now gatekeeping certain privacy settings behind the premium subscription like it’s 2003. They also make it difficult to hide your pseudo identity from your phone contacts. I’ve had all the “discover contacts” settings turned off, and simply reinstalling the app caused people to be given my username without my consent. Settings somehow magically switched themselves back on and I couldn’t turn them off until after the damage was done. There was no confirmation prompt. Pretty sure this happened to me more than once. Please don’t ever compare Telegram with Signal.

LtWorf 3y ago
Come on signal until today had no way to keep the phone number private. Which is the topic here.
- fidelramos 3y ago
  Because unlike Telegram they strive to do things in a privacy-respecting way, and that's hard to get right.
  - guappa 3y ago
    Wasn't the saying "perfect is the enemy of good"? While waiting to have it perfect you don't have it good either.
kome 3y ago
i've been using Telegram on and off since 2015 or so, and i've never shared my contacts. never! re-installing Telegram has never changed that setting. The real problem with cellphones is that a lot of privacy-threatening issues are literally one fat finger away. And clearly, that's a feature, not a bug. That's why I prefer to work and message on my laptop anyway. but again, Telegram has been, in many practical ways, much more privacy-oriented than all the other messengers, exactly because you don't have to share your phone number to participate in groups and chats.
hanniabu 3y ago
> telegram is now gatekeeping certain privacy settings behind the premium subscription Such as?
- Systemling0815 3y ago
  Last online status
- vld_chk 3y ago
  For example, now you can’t restrict who can send you a message unless you have a premium. Also they added a “feature” that premium users can bypass non-premium users privacy setting “last seen and online” and TG will tell that info regardless of your choice unless you are premium too.

vld_chk 3y ago

Telegram and Signal solves very different types of privacy issues. Telegram is good, as you mention, to be relatively private in groups/chats/channels without a need to expose neither your phone nor even a nickname (unless you live in autocratic countries — will come to this later). But it comes with costs. First, their p2p communication is not e2e encrypted by default. Not to say that all comments/group chats are not encrypted too, unlike let’s say WA. Second, Telegram API. It gives too much information. You can do a lot with it: read history, track changes of usernames, etc. For example, it is quite easy to obtain an internal user ID and there are black market services and databases where they promise to connect that ID with phone number if that account ever had privacy settings switched off in the past. Claimed that they kind of scrape all accounts and pair ID for those where privacy settings set poorly. Even if you change it later — your internal ID and that scrape will state forever. Third, Telegram was funded by Russian government since Durov had issues with SEC. He raised money from different Russian state-owned banks like VTB, issued bonds which are traded in Saint-Petersburg stock exchange, and even take some money directly from Russian government though a Qatar proxy-company. Not to say, that there are cases when TG was involved in criminal charges against people (the most famous one is story with Ryanair plane being forced to land in Minsk to arrest Lukashenko’s critique) and it was never directly addressed and explained by company how exactly those people was caught and how company protect against “SIM card replacement” cases (Signal at least inform me everytime my peer logged to new device). Selecting between Signal with AFAIK no known cases of charges in dictatorship countries like Russia, funded by non-profitable charity, and TG without default e2e encryption, public API and Russian-state funding, is quite obvious for me.

grayfaced 3y ago
It was also banned and blocked in Russia for several years. It was only unbanned when they agreed to cooperate with security services. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Telegram_in_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Telegram_in_Russia
- vld_chk 3y ago
  More to this “lucky coincidence” it was unbanned exactly when Durov failed in trouble with SEC and raised Russian-state money to solve his problems. Around same time almost all official Russian institutions open TG accounts and Russian Parliament (if we can call that silly thing like this) representatives was saying like “we solved all problems with them”. When war started, and Russia banned a lot of services like FB, they created list of communication platforms they have questions about loyalty and cooperation with Russian government. TG was not on that list and through the whole war the only issue was about Telegraph — supplementary platform to publish long notes. AFAIK there was 0 questions or criticisms to TG in those 2 years. As for me, it says a lot

snotrockets 3y ago

Telegram isn't a messaging service. It's a social network with a messenger UI. Quite ingenious, if you'd ask me, but a social network and a private messenger can't really be reconciled into a single product.

AnonHP 3y ago
What would you classify Signal as, with its stickers, cryptocurrency (MobileCoin), etc.?
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  I think "social" in this context refers to frictionless friend finding, not stickers. Good privacy involves a certain level of friction, with PGP verification being a classic example of the UX problem space.
- snotrockets 3y ago
  Signal is one-to-one or many-to-many. Telegram is mostly few-to-many.

Faizan711 3y ago

Why do you say that Telegram isn't as secure as signal?

jknutson 3y ago
I’m not who you replied to, but I agree with his sentiment about signal being superior to telegram in terms of security (or more specifically, privacy). For me, there’s two big reasons for this: Signal chats are E2E at all times, while Telegram is only E2E when you explicitly create a “secret chat” with whoever you’re conversing with. I don’t fault Telegram too much for this, because they still provide the option to use E2E for everything, but Signal gets brownie points in my book because they just do it by default without getting in the way of the User. Secondly, as far as I know, Telegram uses their own in house encryption techniques as opposed to industry standards. I am not at all knowledgeable about encryption or cryptography— I only know what’s required of me in my job (basically the bare minimum), and so I don’t actually know whether this is anything of serious concern. It could very well be that Telegram’s encryption techniques are just as effective as the established norms, but I do see the general consensus trending towards “roll your own encryption = bad, use established norms = good”, which is primarily what I am basing my opinion on here. To further detract from my own point, it actually seems like Telegram might be using “established norms” for encryption nowadays anyways [1], although I couldn’t really tell from the brief description I read on Wikipedia. Overall, I think Telegram is perceived as being less secure than Signal primarily because of the reputation Telegram has for implementing their own in house encryption techniques, even if they don’t use those techniques anymore— their name has become associated with their known history of using ad hoc encryption. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Architecture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Architec...
- _Algernon_ 3y ago
  Also, Telegram does not even have e2ee as an option for group chats while Signal does. That's a pretty big deal!
LtWorf 3y ago
Chats are not e2e encrypted by default, they are just encrypted in transit. However this allows chats to be synced across many devices, so it is very very convenient. Telegram has e2e encrypted chats but only on mobile and not on desktop for some reason.