On its 10th anniversary, Signal’s president wants to remind you that the world’s most secure communications platform is a nonprofit. It’s free. It doesn’t track you or serve you ads. It pays its engineers very well. And it’s a go-to app for hundreds of millions of people.
I’m no authority on it but from what I’ve read it seems to have more to do with the social features of telegram where lots of content is being shared, both legal and illegal. Signal doesn’t have channels that support hundreds of thousands of people at once, nor media hosting to match.
Right, the French authorities are going to present evidence that this dude was aware of specific illegal activity and refuse to comply with a legal warrant involving said actively, making him guilty of obstruction at best, and possibly conspiracy. Signal complies with warrants, they just don’t have anyone’s keys. Telegram has everyone’s keys, and theoretically could turn them over but they refuse. That’s a huge difference from a legal perspective.
Thank you. I’m going to restate your explanation to be sure I’ve got it:
authorities want platforms to comply with legal requests
when Signal gets a subpoena, they open the key locker and show that it’s empty. They provide the metadata they can (sign up date and last seen date, full stop) and tell authorities they can’t do better.
when Telegram gets a subpoena, they open the key locker and show all the keys, then slam it shut in the face of the investigator, telling them to get bent.
conclusion: it’s easier to never have the keys in the first place than to tease the government with them
Signal always responds to authorities when they ask for data, and they give them all they have: the day they registered, their phone number and the timestamp they last used the app.
Telegram has unencrypted channels of drug dealing, and what I heard is a lot of illegal porn too. The authorities want information on certain users there and Telegram doesn’t comply. This is directly against the law Signal is not breaking, because they always send all the data they have to the law enforcement.
But they give their data when the officials ask. That is all that matters. And I seriously hope none of us uses Telegram or WhatsApp to any discussions. Use Signal because that is so far pretty unbreakable.
Telegram is already in the hands of that tiny Russian old man and WhatsApp is owned by a lizard.
Telegram is a propaganda weapon in some sense, between two worldviews - one is “a good service doesn’t require trust, because they physically can’t sell you”, another is “a good service you can trust because they won’t sell you”. And Telegram helps the latter.
So frankly - kill it with fire. Sadly I’m in Russia and everybody uses it here.
The folks at F-Droid have said that Signal would certainly qualify, but Signal doesn’t want multiple channels out there. F-Droid is just honoring their wishes.
Are you developing your opinions based on vibes or have you actually audited their software yourself (you are free to do so both client and federation server code)?
If you audited it, have you produced an actual report with metrics and points of reference for your data points?
It’s actually sad, even though I’m a libertarian, tankies and in general marxists could have made a good input into our future. But if they can believe in Telegram being secure because of vibes and not even doing basic research, they’ve already lost.
Heeey I am also a libertarian, I just tend towards left libertarian. Back to the point of discussion, I find it difficult to ha e a meaningful conversation with the tankies or in general anyone from lemmy.ml . The discussions tend to lack any real data and feel entirely vibe based OR it’s apologist bullshit for Russia.
Like it’s cool if you like communism and have a philosophy based around why you think it’ll help humanity. I can politely disagree but still listen and discuss. It’s quite another to just be a complete dipshit and say “Ukraine had the invasion coming” (actual quote I’ve seen).
They won’t there’s no need. Their clients are garbage and they’re most likely backdoored anyways. This action against Telegram is only happening because they can’t get inside it, they can’t backdoor it nor corrupt anyone. If they were able to do that they wouldn’t be doing this.
No matter how good the protocol or client encryption, your privacy is only as good as your own physical security for the device in question.
Given that if you lose your private key, there is no recovery, I would be surprised if there were real back doors in the clients. Maybe unintentional ways to leak data, but you can go look for yourself: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android
If you don’t turn on the secret chat feature it wont be, yes. However if E2EE was the only deciding factor for a gov to go against an App then they woudln’t be going after Telegram. The fact that govts are going so hard at telegram simply proves that even when the company has access to all our chats they don’t actually provide them to said govts.
I’m not saying telegram is good from a security perspective, I’m just saying that event without E2EE and all the modern wonders govts can’t still get in because the company doesn’t indulge their requests.
I hope they don’t arrest them too.
She has her hand in too many strategic places, unlike Telegram.
Not that the action against Telegram is right, but there’s a big difference between what Signal and Telegram is doing.
Would you have more info on the differences? I was wondering the same thing, but I don’t know enough about Telegram to compare
I’m no authority on it but from what I’ve read it seems to have more to do with the social features of telegram where lots of content is being shared, both legal and illegal. Signal doesn’t have channels that support hundreds of thousands of people at once, nor media hosting to match.
Right, the French authorities are going to present evidence that this dude was aware of specific illegal activity and refuse to comply with a legal warrant involving said actively, making him guilty of obstruction at best, and possibly conspiracy. Signal complies with warrants, they just don’t have anyone’s keys. Telegram has everyone’s keys, and theoretically could turn them over but they refuse. That’s a huge difference from a legal perspective.
Thank you. I’m going to restate your explanation to be sure I’ve got it:
Signal always responds to authorities when they ask for data, and they give them all they have: the day they registered, their phone number and the timestamp they last used the app.
Telegram has unencrypted channels of drug dealing, and what I heard is a lot of illegal porn too. The authorities want information on certain users there and Telegram doesn’t comply. This is directly against the law Signal is not breaking, because they always send all the data they have to the law enforcement.
while not wrong context matters, US social media companies also enable human, weapons, and drug trafficking. they play a role in a few genocides too.
but the western regime does not care.
But they give their data when the officials ask. That is all that matters. And I seriously hope none of us uses Telegram or WhatsApp to any discussions. Use Signal because that is so far pretty unbreakable.
Telegram is already in the hands of that tiny Russian old man and WhatsApp is owned by a lizard.
Telegram is a propaganda weapon in some sense, between two worldviews - one is “a good service doesn’t require trust, because they physically can’t sell you”, another is “a good service you can trust because they won’t sell you”. And Telegram helps the latter.
So frankly - kill it with fire. Sadly I’m in Russia and everybody uses it here.
Telegram is available on F-Droid. Signal is not. Whatever is Signal doing, it’s pretty bad.
The folks at F-Droid have said that Signal would certainly qualify, but Signal doesn’t want multiple channels out there. F-Droid is just honoring their wishes.
Are you developing your opinions based on vibes or have you actually audited their software yourself (you are free to do so both client and federation server code)?
If you audited it, have you produced an actual report with metrics and points of reference for your data points?
This person has been running around spreading FUD in every post about this
It’s what Ive come to expect from the lemmy.ml instance and I finally blocked the entire instance.
It’s actually sad, even though I’m a libertarian, tankies and in general marxists could have made a good input into our future. But if they can believe in Telegram being secure because of vibes and not even doing basic research, they’ve already lost.
Heeey I am also a libertarian, I just tend towards left libertarian. Back to the point of discussion, I find it difficult to ha e a meaningful conversation with the tankies or in general anyone from lemmy.ml . The discussions tend to lack any real data and feel entirely vibe based OR it’s apologist bullshit for Russia.
Like it’s cool if you like communism and have a philosophy based around why you think it’ll help humanity. I can politely disagree but still listen and discuss. It’s quite another to just be a complete dipshit and say “Ukraine had the invasion coming” (actual quote I’ve seen).
The very fact that there have never been any attempts in the west to stop Signal from operating says volumes in my opinion.
They won’t there’s no need. Their clients are garbage and they’re most likely backdoored anyways. This action against Telegram is only happening because they can’t get inside it, they can’t backdoor it nor corrupt anyone. If they were able to do that they wouldn’t be doing this.
No matter how good the protocol or client encryption, your privacy is only as good as your own physical security for the device in question.
Given that if you lose your private key, there is no recovery, I would be surprised if there were real back doors in the clients. Maybe unintentional ways to leak data, but you can go look for yourself: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android
They have one for each client.
Yeah, that’s what I think it may be. Just like Apple reporting on all apps you open on un-encrypted HTTP calls and a few other things.
are you talking about phone notification bullshit and google got caught reporting to government with no warrants.
Not only that, https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/
Telegram isn’t even E2EE
If you don’t turn on the secret chat feature it wont be, yes. However if E2EE was the only deciding factor for a gov to go against an App then they woudln’t be going after Telegram. The fact that govts are going so hard at telegram simply proves that even when the company has access to all our chats they don’t actually provide them to said govts.
I’m not saying telegram is good from a security perspective, I’m just saying that event without E2EE and all the modern wonders govts can’t still get in because the company doesn’t indulge their requests.