Use services that store as little data as possible.
If data is stored, it can be given away and I would assume that it will be given away.
Telegram disguises itself as encrypted chat app, when it is actually just a regular centralized plaintext messenger that has an encryption feature that nobody uses.
No. It doesn't. This sentiment is pretty much confined to HN and seems to stem from the whole Moxie non-sense from years ago.
Telegram is a so much more than a messenger. It competes with WeChat, not Signal. It has an incredible API, bots, payments, apps/games, and is host to Onlyfans / Discord-like social groups.
It's time to stop parroting this idea that Telegram is some kind of secure messenger. Yes, it has secret chats, but that is not Telegram's defining feature.
* Simple
* _Private_
* Synced
* Fast
* Powerful
* Open
* Secure
* Social
* Expressive
It is not by accident that people think that Telegram is focussed on privacy.
100%. the same reason i avoid whatsapp and signal like the plague. "mobile number" is in itself a big identifier when you are living in a place where you have o do mandatory KYC so that the government knows which each mobile number is linked to the actual human being.
i dont care signal doesnt hold any messages. the government can ask for my number and they can use the xkcd spanner method to do the rest. the point is to AVOID PII in the first place, matrix does this wonderfully. no need for mobile number or email number or your real name.
living in an actual police state, i can attest to how important that is, americans/europeans can hardly imagine.
Whose number? How are the government going to "ask for your number" ? Signal doesn't hold any data that would let them answer that query if they wanted to.
They can still beat you with a wrench to divulge your information even if it’s on Matrix or even pen and paper.
Only Signal leaves your message on their servers totally encrypted at-rest whose keys stays at your phone. No court order can ever hope to compel Signal what was said. The court will instead need one of the parties' phone for that, if it hasn't expire-deleted yet and doesn't have 9-alphanumeric characters or longer password length.
That cannot be said true of Telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat (that I've reversed engineered).
Americans and Europeans have the desire to learn this lesson the hard way. They lack the wisdom to learn from others and instead believe their governments are the noble governments that would never violate their rights for power.
That's a minor inconvenience compared to not being able to communicate with most people who use these mainstream networks.
I'm more worried about the lack of encryption and trustworthiness aspect of them than giving away a phone number.
Telecom companies have full records of who had what IP, for what duration and when as does your ISP. If a phone number will get you pinched (based on no decryptable data) then so will anything else.
Use Matrix clients (Element, Fluffy chat) or Session, Briar (no (video)calls), Delta (no (video)calls), Jami, not recommending Threema because they can tie you through payment and it's centralized
Here simple chart to see what to use and not use (use translate feature):
>Use Matrix clients (Element, Fluffy chat) or Session, Briar...
I might be misremembering though
Where does it do this?
Best description of Telegram that I've seen so far.
I do trust Signal to keep the phone numbers safe with their methodology for doing that, but probably wouldn't anyone else.
Don't use messengers that ask for your phone number. Period.
They can knowingly launder billions of dollars for drug dealers plus terrorists and not even face a day in jail, comments like this make me chuckle.
The only "CEO"s facing jail are the people with 100 employees who shouldn't even have the title in the first place.
This is partly why Govts are so persistent about data-localization norms while in the past companies got away by storing data in a more privacy-friendly country. Here too, Telegram tried to make the argument that the data is stored in Singapore, but the courts got their way.
One of the more recent E2EE private messaging apps with metadata shredding and no registration requirement for is https://xx.network/messenger
It's available for Android & iOS.
F-Droid users can build Android version from the source (https://git.xx.network/elixxir/) and load it themselves.
There's no registration and the app doesn't collect your phone number, device ID and similar crap. Is it mature and polished? No, it has its quirks and rough corners. But it won't let you down on security and encryption.
Then the sewer system would be a bucket brigade: You fill a bucket at home and bring it over to your neighbor, and they pass it on in a long stinky chain of wastewater until it gets to the treatment plant or the ocean.
There would be no such thing as faucets, pipes, or protected water sources. It would just be a cycle of spraying it all into the air and bucket-brigading back to the source.
And that's today's Internet.
If you're going to be that puerile then... I had to scroll past their list of available clients and their recent news section to get to this "Why Telegram" section that first mentions the word "private". So clearly, that far down the page, its not a priority.
Back in reality: The word "private" can mean anything. Every app and website that uses https claims to have privacy and security. If you bother to read their FAQ (which is always at the top of the page and, according to your logic, must be very important), there is a detailed explanation of exactly what is and isn't encrypted.
https://telegram.org/faq#security
I can already hear you typing, "but the average person doesn't read FAQs!" Well, the average person doesn't know or care about e2ee either. And the average person doesn't think Telegram is any more or less private than Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter DMs, SMS, or email. The average person just doesn't think about privacy in this way.
There's not a truly solid secure anonymous implementation that I've found.
this does not scale as easily. sure if you are an actual target, your goose is probably cooked anyway but what about the masses? i am just saying, what we call "mass surveilance" and wrench beating dont go hand in hand. mobile number helps them in mass surveilance which can give them more leads.
if that limb is removed, they can still do it but it is a bit harder so the hope is they will focus their time on only serious cases as opposed to everyone willy nilly because it is just so easy
Sooo, not really an alternative (at least for the user whose data got subpoena'd).
> Justice Prathiba M. Singh in the order dated November 24 said the names of admins, the phone numbers and IP addresses of some of the channels as are available with Telegram have been supplied.
Of course, I can't independently verify this, but the article claims pretty clearly that the data has already been provided.
The technology itself wasn't changed and Wire was still involved in exciting things like MLS (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-mls-protocol/) when all this was happening (~4 years ago).
And that from the SIM, you get IMEI, which can be cross ref'd with telecom logs to get geolocation?
Phone numbers are basically a glorified UUID. Also, in most jurisdictions it is required by law that telcos have tight integration with Law Enforcement, and even with the U.S., any type of investigation will start with a pull for the individual's phone number from whereever, cross ref that with SIM financial payment info, cross ref'd with bank accounts/credit card activity for purchase activity. Then cross-ref with Driver's license/civic/court records?
By DEFAULT. Third party doctrine. It ain't protected by the Fourth Amendment. In less zealous states, forget about principled restraint. The phone number is effectively your citizen Id.
When people like me start raising hell about the dangers of UUID primitives, this is what we're trying to protect you from.
No one can be trusted with the view created by the aggregation and cross-reference of this type of info. Every government/legislature/population will eventually "think of the children/criminals" their way to it anyway though, while law enforcement jumps up and down with glee at how complete a picture they can get through their fusion centers. Then it's just a matter of how long it takes for an autocrat to insert themselves into a place of power until the technological marvel that empowers law enforcement to "ensnare the bad guys", has "bad guys" surreptitiously crossed out and replaced with some signifier for a set of people that contains you.
If you don't think that happens, you ain't been paying enough attention. If you wonder why that hasn't been an issue before, it was because part of what puts a check on LE was the burden of physically referencing and cross-ref'ing data, which would put a fundamental cap on the ability for any abuse of power to materialize.
We're losing that check. Quickly.
Sure. But which phone number?
does signal keep your mobile number? just that? not asking about metadata or actual message data, just number associated to an account?
Or, instead of spending $$$ on lawyers to make Signal tell you the answer to obvious questions, which US government agencies have done several times - I reckon I'd do it for $10 per time, minimum order 1000 stupid questions.
I can do other stupid questions, wondering which Telegram user is "@foobar" ? I can tell you it's "@foobar" and for just $10. Now, Telegram can tell you a lot more about this user of theirs, so you might want to get the court to make them do that, but Signal don't know anything about their users so maybe my $10 service is more "useful" for Signal? I guess it really depends what you think the word "useful" means.
what are you on about. how could a company compel a government to "pay" them when they can just force them to have a mole on payroll?
exact same thing. you register your whatsapp group meaning you either get a mole as a member to keep track of the activities or you are made to (unverified) install pegasus style malware on your phone so that the admins can be tracked.
this is exactly https://kashmirlife.net/sleuths-silently-listen-to-clubhouse...
so its not like i am just making this shit up.
remember, clubhouse makes you sign up using the phone so there you go. Now, if the numbers werent there, it would still be possible but not as low effort
https://www.phonetravelwiz.com/phone-travel-options/sim-card...
> Of the 245 countries/territories with territory-bound mobile operators, 185 countries have SIM card registration laws. 13 will collect biometrics (fingerprints, but some will take a face scan too). 51 countries have no registration requirements.
Which by itself is questionable.
I had understood that the majority of countries now required SIM card registration. Plenty of EU member states do (at least Belgium, Austria, Italy, Germany...), so it's not just the usual suspects(!)
People have to understand that meta-data about you is almost as important as data.
For example just the fact that your phone has signal or telegram installed is meta-data that helps to identify you. They do not need to know your name.
And for bonus:
https://www.justsecurity.org/10311/michael-hayden-kill-peopl...
you can use your own encryption on top of a cleartext model if that is a problem
To me it makes sense. We had centuries where people could send a letter from one country to another country, both with their own postal services. Why can't we send a message from iMessage to Whatsapp without installing another company's spyware?
However, I do not agree at all with the EU's plans for Chat Control.
Pondering why your refactoring of "Network Effects" has a lot of truth;
The supposed property that the attractive influence of a network is proportional to its size, rather like gravitational agglomeration, turns out to be largely false in practice.
My observation is that people don't join a network because "all their friends" are on it. That's a myth. But they do find it hard to leave because one or two highly weighted friends (family, parents living abroad etc) are on it.
You could probably say "network effects is just marketing" too. I think the idea of "organic growth" is also largely a myth. Massive amounts of marketing hype and billion dollar influence operations herd the masses, and also default settings and bundling. It's hard to avoid Google, Facebook or Twitter when your phone and browser come pre-configured with them.
With Telegram I can see at least appeal in using it as news source, chat room or for bots, but what offers Signal besides hype about The Current Thing?
Signal uses centralized server with closed source (they hidden code for one year until they finally gave up when users nagged them, nobody knows what they did during that year), Signal requires your phone number, Signal doesn't allow third party apps officially and tried to push some shady crypto, I mean how many red flags you need to avoid such POS app?
>With Telegram I can see at least appeal in using it as news source, chat room or for bots, but what offers Signal besides hype about The Current Thing?...
It also has some infuriatingly shite 'features' such as the fact that one party in a conversation can delete messages from the other party's device and [as is oft-mentioned] the fact that comms are not E2E encrypted by default. But, on the whole, I reckon it's the best all-round messenger app out there. Just so long as you're not under any illusion that your comms are in any way secure.
Signal is partly an attempt to normalise a service with strong encryption to provide a crowd it's easier to hide in.
i am saying remove the mobile requirement and signal is perfect. not until then.
signal to noise ratio of people using VPNs removes the linking user device to an account to a good extent.
now, in the existing model, whatever method you use, your number is STILL a PII, in whatsapp or signal or whatever.
>then so will anything else.
100% agree but you whatever counter measures you take, your number is still available in whatsapp/signal so there is NO way to prevent that. IF these two did not have the number, then that would indeed be better but not until then
That a government will scan all domestic phone numbers against a Signal API to identify a list of users who, at one time, installed Signal and use that list to target you? They can do the same with IP addresses of people using VPNs as well. Something is tied to you regardless.
You’re right that the Signal would allow this by phone number or IP, so it’s an additional angle at the same threat.
Signal works perfectly in my use case, my friends and family happily switched over to it where when I tried to help my parents set up Matrix it was super verbose and required them to remember long passwords, etc. (of course they shoul dbe using a password manager, but one step at a time!).
They are encrypted with a key you have to note down somewhere though, so if you don't prepare for it the messages are, in fact, gone forever.
I regret getting friends and family to use signal.
F, for Failure
Only China does it better ... the oppression, of speech, that is, as evidence by a video of CCP police roaming subway trains, reading every subway commuters' cellphone for social media content. As if CPP's ability to monitor centralized servers isn't cutting it anymore.
https://mobile.twitter.com/caro4ontario/status/1597588741371...
Traditional Americans are few and far between these days. Decades of "liberal" education pushing a rose colored view of strong central governments have changed the American Culture this is why you see younger voters increasingly looking to government not community to solve their problems.
One of the reasons why Democrats want 16-year-olds to vote, because only people with limited brain development would support most of their policies ;)
And yes, I know that, strictly speaking 'Telegram != social media'. But, with Telegram Channels, it does kind of cross over into the 'Discordy' end of social media.
I expect it would be easier to compromise a group member's phone than someone's Google account.
In your example where Democrats support the 4th amendment, what except if a random person says you are armed then the 4th goes out the window, except if you are deemed to be rich then the 4th goes out the window, except if you have the "Wrong" opinions then the 4th goes out the windows
Democrats like Republicans only support the 4th, and every other amendment to the point where it supports their narrative and desire for power, the second the constitution is deemed to stand in the way of their power well it is document that should be ignored "for the greater good"
They are referring to in-transit message over Internet as virtually indecipherable: Nothing a court warrant can't get directly from their servers.
Moxie also "rolled his own crypto". "Rolling your own crypto" is typically used disparagingly by those who claim moral or intellectual superiority over the competition. The Signal Protocol was rolled by someone, yes? The version of MTProto that had vulnerabilities discovered was deprecated many years ago.
Most people think of “private” as between the conversation parties, not everyone in the conversation, the company, and any government with leverage on them.
Encryption at rest prevents from some intrusion attacks but does absolutely nothing against a warrant if the government has leverage.
(Just to clarify: I like Telegram. I just don't like Durov very much and the way he positions Telegram as the superior messenger in every way, even though it obviously isn't when it comes to encryption in particular.)
I did not claim that.
When I wrote:
> Telegram disguises itself as encrypted chat app
I meant exactly that.
Or is my family just weird in their chat preferences?
Every mechanical thing we come up has a decode-able sequence.
DIY filter bubbles each of a unique configuration, decoupled from someone else’s monolith is the only way to be sure.
It’s reverse Highlander; there cannot be only one. It’s fine, we were never all going to get along anyway.
Wdym, can you please explain? Decoupling is the only way to be sure of what?
I remember IRC very fondly, but I feel it has a lot of baggage that makes it difficult to bring into the modern era.
This blog post (not mine) explains it quite well: https://jlu5.com/blog/im-tired-of-irc-heres-why
[0]: https://pestnet.io
Cached copy here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220915015328/https://pestnet.i...
Reminds me a bit of SILC: http://www.silcnet.org/
Still going to struggle with UX on a phone though...
This is where the privacy promise falls apart. From a user's perspective on-disk encryption makes no difference, because there is no real enhancement of privacy for them. If a third party holds the key, they hold the key. If you put something into the hotel safe, the hotel could still steal it from you. As far as I can tell, most TG users are not aware or do not care, but for those who are not aware, but actually do care, this should be made much more clear.
> Moxie also "rolled his own crypto"
Besides Moxie being a bit dubious himself, the more interesting question is: was there something that was already verified by many people that could have been used instead?
The way he is attacking this alternative Signal client and rules out interoperability:
https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
Signal was a word before he decided to turn it into a brand.
The signal server source code repo was not updated for a year. Communication intransparent.
https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/04/06/it-looks-like-signa...
I am not even against crypto integration, but I found the choice of MobileCoin odd. Instead of integrating an existing privacy coin or working with the community, he decided to integrate MOB and to be one of their "advisors":
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/24/mobilecoin-moxie-marlinspi...
Use another messenger if you like but e2ee encryption is not some moral imperative that must be done. There are always trade-offs. I appreciate Telegram for the purposes I use it for. If I want e2ee, I turn on a Secret Chat.
I just think that Telegram tries to position itself as some kind of subversive and secure messenger (successfully so), which it isn't and I find that dubious. I can see that many people prefer it for its user experience, which is fair, but people should not be lured by a false sense of security.
> e2ee encryption is not some moral imperative that must be done.
It is not a moral imperative, but a protection against many evils, that most people probably would benefit from if used consistently. I've got low tolerance for trying to artificially limit e2ee though.
What I was expecting from Telegram (although it doesn't look like they plan to do this) is synced, E2E encrypted cloud chats. So any new device I add has access to all the previous message history, and is independent of all other devices.
Don't worry, you're safe from hackers, deep state, and foreign nation-state from eavesdropping on ya over the net through their awesomely robust and intensely-touted advertised EE2E capability.
You encrypt the message with all the public key's from persons in the group, what's the problem? You do it the same way with Mail...aka pgp.
You don't need OTR just plain old gnupg:
If you get a whole bunch of people together in real life for a meeting then chances are one or more of them is going to leak what happened. The problem is to a great extent inherent.
(I won’t comment on Session, I’m not familiar with the finer details there.)
I live in a country with strict KYC on phone numbers - my signal account uses a phone number from a different country in the world, not associated with any person in a country I have never been to and activated in a very odd location once only before being destroyed.
If you actually care about security / privacy to the extent of hiding from state actors then it is trivial to do. If you are cosplaying as a privacy enthusiast, then different matter and we can all bang on about open-source, audits, 14 eyes, tor, monero.
Phone numbers are recycled so eventually it will become someone else's phone number unless you continue paying for it.
So let me ask you this: What’s your threat model? Does your threat model require you to hide your location from the Five Eyes?
Signal requires extra information that is not necessary for exchanging messages. That is at least suspicious. If you are fine with giving away your number you can just use WhatsApp or Telegram.
Signal uses centralized server with closed source (they hidden code for one year until they finally gave up when users nagged them, nobody knows what they did during that year), Signal requires your phone number, Signal doesn't allow third party apps officially and tried to push some shady crypto, I mean how many red flags you need to avoid such POS app?
Signal has always been transparent about what information get sent to the server: https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/
Even if some adversary is doing some kind of correlation to glean metadata from your traffic, they are definitely doing the table stakes here to preserve privacy and not just send your information off willy-nilly.
We are quite many where the threat model does not depend on hiding our phone number from the government.
https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/kashmir-lockdown-arres...
https://thenextweb.com/news/kashmirs-police-want-people-to-r... >Kashmir’s police want people to ‘register’ their WhatsApp groups
https://www.dailyexcelsior.com/police-crackdown-keypad-jehad... >Police crackdown on ‘keypad jehadis’
https://kashmirobserver.net/2022/01/11/jk-police-launches-cr... >J&K Police Launches Crackdown On People ‘Misusing’ Social Media
"misuing" means writing material that is critical to the ruling party.
https://www.greaterkashmir.com/chenab-valley/authorities-in-... here, the police simply take your name/number and pick you up from the street. open and shut case in an hour.
Why should whatsapp/facebook/twitter help them? 1. they have business interests in india and they NEED to please the government if they want to survive in india so there are no court orders or anything needed. the police have carte blanche to demand any information and for them, name/number is good enough because the data is available with them.
an example from my own home. A family member was active on twitter last year and would get into "twitter debates" and that nonsense. they would use their own name because of the websites ask for "firstname/last name" and normally people don't care about that. anyway, during one such online fight, a random opponent apparently told them "you wont listen to me so i will have police explain it to you" or something to that end. 3 days later the police comes home "enquiring" about them. we had a hard time "explaining" the situation and some money exchanged hands after which we were off the hook. "never again they said, later"...
afterwards, i did a checkup of their account and they had 2FA activated on their number which i strongly suspect was passed on to the police. again, no "evidence" but my own anecdata.
>Feel free to explain your threat model.
i am "living" this threat model so the techniques used in iran for example used by dissidents or anti-government protestors or in china by anti-ccp protestors for example, i am going through that myself and PII in any form is dangerous.
sure, lets say i don't use my real name in twitter or use 2fa and twitter gives my "ip address" or something. they would have to corelate that information with a separate demand with ISP.... not low hanging fruit as much. mobile numbers, well they have dumps and mobile numbers dont change hands a lot.
OTOH, if i use my selfhosted matrix for example, the provider, some random DMCA ignore ones would laugh at them. even if they asked for payment, i pay from crypto so what will they get? and its not like the webmaster of my own server(read me) would not give any details to any demand from even PM of india so short of blocking my server IP,what can they do?
speaking of dense exotic matter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf
Feel free to explain how that affects message integrity/message confidentiality in a negative way.
As Signal is on a centralized Google Cloud instance, it can easily be shut down by the providers and that is that.
> nobody knows what they did during that year).
They (and Moxie) were too busy shoving their private cryptocurrency scam project in Signal to later get as many users using it as possible to then pump and dump the coins on exchanges.
Signal is a complete joke.
Scanning a QR isn't actually necessary. That flow exists for when you open the invitation on e.g. a desktop or laptop, and you actually want to set up Snikket on your phone/tablet. The invitation page guides you through you what to do in that case, you don't need to know what a "QR code" is. But most people just open the invitation directly on their phone, and it has a magic link to install the app.
In some ways it's easier, because you don't need to go through the SMS verification and stuff that the phone-number-based platforms require. I know various APIs and hacks have made that flow easier over the years, but it's still an extra step for non-technical people to get lost in. It's also an obstacle for people who want to use a tablet, such as my children who are too young for phones.
In any case, I'd encourage people to be less defeatist about the adoption of more open alternatives (intended or not, that's how I read your comment). It is possible... my own family average no more or less technical than any other. They manage to use WhatsApp without help, and they manage to use Snikket without help. And of course I'm not the only person using it successfully.
I think the best bet would be to create a device with the sole functionality of establishing an encrypted voice line to you. Essentially, a plastic brick with an on button, speaker and microphone. No screen, no UI, just on/off. Like a walkie-talkie, but for infinite distances.
And no you don't need to verify each other keys, since every one has his public key you obliviously trust, you just try to make an excuse for not knowing how e2e works.
Glad it had nothing to do with libolm itself but how it is used/not-used. I thought they had 3rd party audits for this.
Those projects do not have the same high standards as Signal has. Especially not Telegram. I use Whatsapp for convenience/social reasons, but I definitely prefer Signal for the additional security. Telegram I don’t use at all.
I don’t believe it’s reasonable to throw out the baby with bath water, just because Signal requires a phone number for registration.
Protection from “any actor” would of course be nice – but do you really believe that threat model is reasonable?
Would using Session, Matrix or OMEMO protect against any actor whatsoever?
If we want to base our discussion in reality, I do believe we need to talk about threat models in more detail than “I want protection from any threat actor”.
Let’s take an example:
If I send a message to a friend I don’t want any script kiddies, ISP, cloud provider or advertising agency to be able to read it. I don’t want any passive eavesdropper to be able to read it e.g. by slurping up all traffic from my nearest IXP (i.e. dragnet surveillance). However, if Five Eyes/Mossad/MUST/FSB really wanted some intel on me, they would probably be able to retrieve it if they were willing to spend some resources. But probably not by decrypting my Signal messages. There would be other, far cheaper ways to retreive the info.
Also as I understand you have to give your number to your contacts to be able to chat with them. For comparison, Telegram allows adding contacts without sharing a phone number. So in Signal all contacts know your real identity and your location.
However, I do understand that sharing one’s phone number is problematic for some users.
With that said: Until Signal implements user names in their system, please note that the user is not required to sign up for Signal with their primary telephone number. One could use Google Voice or a prepaid SIM card for example.