this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Privacy

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This is an article written by telegram's founder and CEO Pavel Durov in 2019 on "Why whatsapp will never be secure". Your thoughts?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 82 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (9 children)

Sure, fuck WhatsApp, but Telegram isn't even end-to-end encrypted most of the time. Their group chats never are, and their "secret chat" encryption for non-group chats must be explicitly enabled and hardly ever is because it disables some features. And when it is encrypted, it's with some dubious nonstandard cryptography.

It's also pseudo open source; they do publish source code once in a while but it never corresponds to the binaries that nearly everyone actually uses.

And the audacity to talk about metadata when Telegram accounts still require a phone number today (as they did five years ago when this post was written) is just... ๐Ÿคฏ

State-sponsored exploits against WhatsApp might be more common than against Telegram, or at least we hear about them more, but it's not because the app is more vulnerable: it's because governments don't need to compromise the endpoint to read your Telegram messages: they can just add a new device to your account with an SMS and see everything.

(โ•ฏยฐ ยฐ๏ผ‰โ•ฏ๏ธต โ”ปโ”โ”ป

Anything claiming to prioritize privacy yet asking for your phone number (Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, ...) is a farce.

[โ€“] Neon 21 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Anything claiming to prioritize privacy yet asking for your phone number (Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, ...) is a farce.

Yeah, sure. The privacy farce signal.

I'm getting tired of this stupid hardline-take.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Telegram isn't perfect, but it is infinitely better than Whatsapp because it doesn't belong to Facebook, and also isn't from the United States. Also it can be used by normies without problem, unlike Matrix or Xmpp or what have you.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Shit, 2019 really was five years ago.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Signal is great. Stop being overzealous

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)
[โ€“] Neon 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Signal is just fine. This with the PhoneNumber is a really stupid hardliner-take.

Something can be private without being anonymous.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Read up on Xmpp or matrix as good alternatives.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Matrix not yet untill they implemented proper encryption and security stuff

SimpleX is pretty cool

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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Bravo, bravo, bravo!!

Dude, see you on the same side of the barricades when the time comes to fight the centralized army of agent Smiths ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘

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[โ€“] [email protected] 53 points 10 months ago (11 children)

What a load of hipocrisy. The dude uses unauthenticated DH for his apps "secret chats", which a bored student with a laptop can MITM in seconds. Other chats use just TLS, meaning they get to read EVERYTHING.

Use Signal, people.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)
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[โ€“] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (6 children)

"Here's what someone who has never created a private messenger thinks about Whatsapp's privacy."

Why would anyone care about what he has to say? ๐Ÿ’€

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Owned by Facebook, which is a giant US company.

Of fucking course it has backdoors.

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[โ€“] Papanca 21 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Clicking the link gives me the following warning:

The site ahead may contain harmful programs

Firefox blocked this page because it might try to trick you into installing programs that harm your browsing experience (for example, by changing your homepage or showing extra ads on sites you visit).

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

weird, works for me in firefox with all privacy features enabled, can you please try this link: https://telegra.ph/Why-WhatsApp-Will-Never-Be-Secure-05-15

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Your original link is blocked at DNS level on my 'Threat intelligence' blocklist.

And that link is blocked at DNS level by 'Toxic' and 'Stop Forum Spam' filters.

So it's blocked before the browser can even connect for me.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I got the same warning for the original link with ff as well.

Your comment link didn't throw up a red flag.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (21 children)

WhatsApp's e2e encryption is based on the Signal protocol and active by default. Telegram's is opt-in. So much for Telegram's superior privacy...

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[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

WhatsApp will be never private and secure, while Telegram will be never private. ๐Ÿ˜

[โ€“] Asudox 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Who said telegram is secure?

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (7 children)

No one said the opposite, while on WhatsApp they had several vulnerabilities that allowed attackers to get the user phone control.

An example: https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/new-whatsapp-bug-couldve-let-attackers.html

But there were many more vulnerabilities or "features" that WhatsApp allowed attackers or governments to get into user data. While I haven't read anything about against Telegram security.

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[โ€“] Dehydrated 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Both WhatsApp and Telegram suck. Just like any other messenger that's either proprietary or not end to end encrypted. Signal is clearly the best choice.

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Signal is not the best choice, it's just a somewhat aceptable middle ground. I prefer something that doesn't require a phone number and something you can self-host, like XMPP.

[โ€“] Dehydrated 7 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Good luck convincing normies to use some obscure messaging protocol. It's difficult with Signal, even harder with Matrix, basically impossible with XMPP. 99.99999% have never in their life heard about XMPP. Also most mobile clients absolutely suck. You also can't get proper push notifications without completely ruining your battery life. What a great choice!

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I don't see a big difference, the hardest thing by itself is convincing someone to install one more program or app. Also Conversations does not suck.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Guys, please stop using telegram if you care for your security and privacy

Telegram is not fully open source, sometimes they release the source, but the hashes of the builds don't even match (so it's a different source code) ๐Ÿšฉ

Zero transparency about data handling, even when they get caught they don't tell details ๐Ÿšฉ (Telegram in the recent years has got really shady reputation)

Very often ways they implement security is weird: non open source app, non open source server, leaking APIs, use of phone numbers, at some point they started asking for an email, non encrypted chats by default, never encrypted group chats.. it can continue forever ๐Ÿšฉ

Non-standard encryption is a real red flag, non-open-source ๐Ÿšฉ

I know some people that work/worked for the police, and they can read all the messages easy peasy, i was trying to tell to the people many years ago, but everyone was so amused by the stickers. Now you can just read stories of the journalists and activists, and how they got imprisoned with the use telegram ๐Ÿ‘๏ธโ€๐Ÿ—จ๏ธ๐Ÿ’€

PLEASE, STOP USING TELEGRAM IF YOU CARE FOR YOUR PRIVACY OR SECURITY

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