Should I stop using Telegram?
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I'm from Mexico, and the most used chat application is WhatsApp. It's used for EVERYTHING. I use Telegram only for contacting my family members (both my parents and my brother). They also use it only for this family chat. All my (and their) contacts use WhatsApp instead.
Now with the news that Telegram will collaborate with Twitter, I feel that I should delete it. Not that Zuck is any better than Musk, but still...
Also I don't think it's worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.
Despite being in the hands of the zuck, whatsapp is more private and secure than telegram, and not because of any collaboration with X/twitter, it's been that way forever... so go ahead and use it (but if you can, signal is even better on that front).
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I'm from Mexico, and the most used chat application is WhatsApp. It's used for EVERYTHING. I use Telegram only for contacting my family members (both my parents and my brother). They also use it only for this family chat. All my (and their) contacts use WhatsApp instead.
Now with the news that Telegram will collaborate with Twitter, I feel that I should delete it. Not that Zuck is any better than Musk, but still...
Also I don't think it's worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.
It’s actually easier to switch over if you’re using a specific app just for family chats. Imagine trying to convince them to switch if they used telegram to communicate with everyone else as well. I’d say take the chance and switch over to Signal while you still can. I moved my family over from viber to signal a long time ago and the transition wasn’t as hard as I expected.
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Collaborating with Xitter is not the most distasteful thing Telegram has done. Its marketing model has been to consistently lie to people about being encrypted when that's only true in very limited cases. It has also catered to criminals by attempting to make it difficult to comply with legal demands for information, while holding that information for its own purposes.
Signal, on the other hand is always encrypted and does its best to hold as little information about users as possible.
Also I don’t think it’s worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.
What is there to learn? Every popular messaging app has pretty much the same UI.
Isn't it good for a communication company to be noncompliant with people's conversations?
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I'm from Mexico, and the most used chat application is WhatsApp. It's used for EVERYTHING. I use Telegram only for contacting my family members (both my parents and my brother). They also use it only for this family chat. All my (and their) contacts use WhatsApp instead.
Now with the news that Telegram will collaborate with Twitter, I feel that I should delete it. Not that Zuck is any better than Musk, but still...
Also I don't think it's worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.
You could use Delta Chat if you wanted...
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Despite being in the hands of the zuck, whatsapp is more private and secure than telegram, and not because of any collaboration with X/twitter, it's been that way forever... so go ahead and use it (but if you can, signal is even better on that front).
WhatsApp is more secure by design, but one suspects that Meta is up to something. But I suppose to whatever extent it's possible to trust Meta, they are nonetheless likely a better guarantor of your security than Telegram is
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I'm from Mexico, and the most used chat application is WhatsApp. It's used for EVERYTHING. I use Telegram only for contacting my family members (both my parents and my brother). They also use it only for this family chat. All my (and their) contacts use WhatsApp instead.
Now with the news that Telegram will collaborate with Twitter, I feel that I should delete it. Not that Zuck is any better than Musk, but still...
Also I don't think it's worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.
I'd take Telegram over WhatsApp as I find Telegram, ignoring privacy concerns, is an excellent messenger. Much better than WhatsApp
But, Signal's pretty great.
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I'm from Mexico, and the most used chat application is WhatsApp. It's used for EVERYTHING. I use Telegram only for contacting my family members (both my parents and my brother). They also use it only for this family chat. All my (and their) contacts use WhatsApp instead.
Now with the news that Telegram will collaborate with Twitter, I feel that I should delete it. Not that Zuck is any better than Musk, but still...
Also I don't think it's worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.
I’ve been all in on telegram for some time now. Signal just doesn’t feel like it’s iterating fast enough. Few years ago, telegram was blazing through and signal was just a disgusting UI meant to make you feel good that you’re using encryption. That has changed.
The xAI news is a pretty big nail in the coffin. But literally every other alternative is shit. WhatsApp is fully owned and definitely farmed by Zuck for data. Their claims of encryption have eroded by everything they’ve done in AI.
Signal is definitely said to be encrypted. But you can bet there’s a back door in there. Specially with all the recent scrutiny on it in the news, hackers are figuring out ways in.
What’s even left to use?
Sorry, don’t have a solution for you. But the world is ready for another messenger - one that actually cares about people and brings features that people like. Heck, I’ll even pay for it, just like I’ve been paying for telegram.
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I'm from Mexico, and the most used chat application is WhatsApp. It's used for EVERYTHING. I use Telegram only for contacting my family members (both my parents and my brother). They also use it only for this family chat. All my (and their) contacts use WhatsApp instead.
Now with the news that Telegram will collaborate with Twitter, I feel that I should delete it. Not that Zuck is any better than Musk, but still...
Also I don't think it's worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.
If you care about these things best would be to use a chat application like Jami which won't end up like WhatsApp.
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I’ve been all in on telegram for some time now. Signal just doesn’t feel like it’s iterating fast enough. Few years ago, telegram was blazing through and signal was just a disgusting UI meant to make you feel good that you’re using encryption. That has changed.
The xAI news is a pretty big nail in the coffin. But literally every other alternative is shit. WhatsApp is fully owned and definitely farmed by Zuck for data. Their claims of encryption have eroded by everything they’ve done in AI.
Signal is definitely said to be encrypted. But you can bet there’s a back door in there. Specially with all the recent scrutiny on it in the news, hackers are figuring out ways in.
What’s even left to use?
Sorry, don’t have a solution for you. But the world is ready for another messenger - one that actually cares about people and brings features that people like. Heck, I’ll even pay for it, just like I’ve been paying for telegram.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Signal is definitely said to be encrypted. But you can bet there’s a back door in there. Specially with all the recent scrutiny on it in the news, hackers are figuring out ways in.
Wow: you know nothing.
- security at Telegram is amateur hour
- the Signal protocol (used by Signal & WhatsApp) is open source, auditable by anyone, and has been audited by security researchers
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If you care about these things best would be to use a chat application like Jami which won't end up like WhatsApp.
Unless you wrote it yourself, never assume that an app won't inevitably enshittify itself. People thought that about Firefox, too.
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Unless you wrote it yourself, never assume that an app won't inevitably enshittify itself. People thought that about Firefox, too.
In what way do you consider Firefox to have enshittified itself?
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Signal is definitely said to be encrypted. But you can bet there’s a back door in there. Specially with all the recent scrutiny on it in the news, hackers are figuring out ways in.
Wow: you know nothing.
- security at Telegram is amateur hour
- the Signal protocol (used by Signal & WhatsApp) is open source, auditable by anyone, and has been audited by security researchers
Care to elaborate? I'm not on anyone's side here but this was a weak argument. I'm sure there's a name for that kind of fallacy.
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If you care about these things best would be to use a chat application like Jami which won't end up like WhatsApp.
SimpleX is another alternative. There are so many popping up that I can't keep track anymore.
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Care to elaborate? I'm not on anyone's side here but this was a weak argument. I'm sure there's a name for that kind of fallacy.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]An observation isn't a fallacy: not an ounce of anything firm to substantiate what they wrote, just impression & hot takes.
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In what way do you consider Firefox to have enshittified itself?
They've been adding AI chatbot integrations into the browser lately.
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I’ve been all in on telegram for some time now. Signal just doesn’t feel like it’s iterating fast enough. Few years ago, telegram was blazing through and signal was just a disgusting UI meant to make you feel good that you’re using encryption. That has changed.
The xAI news is a pretty big nail in the coffin. But literally every other alternative is shit. WhatsApp is fully owned and definitely farmed by Zuck for data. Their claims of encryption have eroded by everything they’ve done in AI.
Signal is definitely said to be encrypted. But you can bet there’s a back door in there. Specially with all the recent scrutiny on it in the news, hackers are figuring out ways in.
What’s even left to use?
Sorry, don’t have a solution for you. But the world is ready for another messenger - one that actually cares about people and brings features that people like. Heck, I’ll even pay for it, just like I’ve been paying for telegram.
As someone who actually works in a security conscious environment, there is no and never will be perfect security. All you can do is layers.
Think of it as two perpetually competing things: effort and motivaion. One is your security, the other is how valuable your data is for hackers, companies or an overmilitarized government (eg any developed nation).
If you're dealing in highly illegal stuff, you will likely get all the attention, which you'd need to be paranoid about. In our current politics its fair to say being for human rights can come near that soon. In average circumstances, only data brokers and other capitalists will try to attach to your data which in turn leak it to the government without a warrant btw.
Security layers work like this: you build individual layers of independent security measures which might be breached but only reveal the next layer which slows down any attacker. Think front door, room door, safe. The important detail is that you don't put all the keys under the front door mat.
Example: you should (obviously) not post your address, bank account, email, etc on the public web. Its not much but doing that you would absolutely not need to care because you're already sharing it for free and will likely be ruined soon.
Then you might want to be selective of your tools. Messaging, data storage (ie cloud), AI, social media. Posting pictures of you and your family on vacation or at home for everyone to see is just asking for brokers to gobble it up.
In private messaging, the word private is very relative. On certain phones, the phone itself reads your screen and tries to suggest things based on the messages you write. On that base, you really dont need to bother about anything other than the script kiddie on the starbucks wifi. You can bet that the phone will share that info if you let it.
So if you need actual privacy because you might say something that isnt exactly legal but not highly illegal as to warrant busting down your door: you might want to switch OSs first on both your phone and computers. It's not perfect but running mint and lineageos (or graphene) you at least dont have the monopolist on data collection directly embedded in your phone. Apples ios does read your screen last i checked so they're out if you want privacy.
Then you can bother about a messaging app. Meta is out. Forget it. Signal is what most people with privacy needs use since it is easy, open source, provided by a nonprofit. The biggest issues are that it is centralized so technically they could be taken down or maybe implement a backdoored encryption. But at that point most efforts will be for naught so lets assume that is not the case for now.
People with technical interests use matrix, which is also used by the german military, decentralized and rather popular in some countries. It's not perfect either since the metadata still leak afaik which means someone can try to identify you and guess your texts in some cases. But of course it is insanely different from whatsapp in terms of control and probability of a breach through meta.
You can use a variety of other messaging apps like simplex chat or even decentralized wireless communication like meshtastic. Its literally impossible to know all the different avenues you can take. So that at least makes it fucking complicated to get all your data, provided you dont back it up on icloud or google. You can even route your messages through hybrid networks of wireless and wired networks if you wish.
Then of course you can pack it all inside a vpn which will depend on your strategy and maybe vendor. Just vpning home helps to make your messages very hard to decrypt at the starbucks but if someone listens on your isp, they can still see who you might be communicating with.
Then there is the matter of google services and push notifications. If you want real privacy, you dont use google services at all and either a privacy concious provider or even nothing. That would mean no outside notifications and only regular or manual checks.
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As someone who actually works in a security conscious environment, there is no and never will be perfect security. All you can do is layers.
Think of it as two perpetually competing things: effort and motivaion. One is your security, the other is how valuable your data is for hackers, companies or an overmilitarized government (eg any developed nation).
If you're dealing in highly illegal stuff, you will likely get all the attention, which you'd need to be paranoid about. In our current politics its fair to say being for human rights can come near that soon. In average circumstances, only data brokers and other capitalists will try to attach to your data which in turn leak it to the government without a warrant btw.
Security layers work like this: you build individual layers of independent security measures which might be breached but only reveal the next layer which slows down any attacker. Think front door, room door, safe. The important detail is that you don't put all the keys under the front door mat.
Example: you should (obviously) not post your address, bank account, email, etc on the public web. Its not much but doing that you would absolutely not need to care because you're already sharing it for free and will likely be ruined soon.
Then you might want to be selective of your tools. Messaging, data storage (ie cloud), AI, social media. Posting pictures of you and your family on vacation or at home for everyone to see is just asking for brokers to gobble it up.
In private messaging, the word private is very relative. On certain phones, the phone itself reads your screen and tries to suggest things based on the messages you write. On that base, you really dont need to bother about anything other than the script kiddie on the starbucks wifi. You can bet that the phone will share that info if you let it.
So if you need actual privacy because you might say something that isnt exactly legal but not highly illegal as to warrant busting down your door: you might want to switch OSs first on both your phone and computers. It's not perfect but running mint and lineageos (or graphene) you at least dont have the monopolist on data collection directly embedded in your phone. Apples ios does read your screen last i checked so they're out if you want privacy.
Then you can bother about a messaging app. Meta is out. Forget it. Signal is what most people with privacy needs use since it is easy, open source, provided by a nonprofit. The biggest issues are that it is centralized so technically they could be taken down or maybe implement a backdoored encryption. But at that point most efforts will be for naught so lets assume that is not the case for now.
People with technical interests use matrix, which is also used by the german military, decentralized and rather popular in some countries. It's not perfect either since the metadata still leak afaik which means someone can try to identify you and guess your texts in some cases. But of course it is insanely different from whatsapp in terms of control and probability of a breach through meta.
You can use a variety of other messaging apps like simplex chat or even decentralized wireless communication like meshtastic. Its literally impossible to know all the different avenues you can take. So that at least makes it fucking complicated to get all your data, provided you dont back it up on icloud or google. You can even route your messages through hybrid networks of wireless and wired networks if you wish.
Then of course you can pack it all inside a vpn which will depend on your strategy and maybe vendor. Just vpning home helps to make your messages very hard to decrypt at the starbucks but if someone listens on your isp, they can still see who you might be communicating with.
Then there is the matter of google services and push notifications. If you want real privacy, you dont use google services at all and either a privacy concious provider or even nothing. That would mean no outside notifications and only regular or manual checks.
Well said! I’ll add that OP should consider their “threat model”, that is, who you’re trying to defend against.
Different attackers may require different defenses. Your comment about security in layers is apt here.
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Isn't it good for a communication company to be noncompliant with people's conversations?
Being unable to comply (signal) and selectively refusing to comply while still having access to the data (telegram) is not equivalent
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I’ve been all in on telegram for some time now. Signal just doesn’t feel like it’s iterating fast enough. Few years ago, telegram was blazing through and signal was just a disgusting UI meant to make you feel good that you’re using encryption. That has changed.
The xAI news is a pretty big nail in the coffin. But literally every other alternative is shit. WhatsApp is fully owned and definitely farmed by Zuck for data. Their claims of encryption have eroded by everything they’ve done in AI.
Signal is definitely said to be encrypted. But you can bet there’s a back door in there. Specially with all the recent scrutiny on it in the news, hackers are figuring out ways in.
What’s even left to use?
Sorry, don’t have a solution for you. But the world is ready for another messenger - one that actually cares about people and brings features that people like. Heck, I’ll even pay for it, just like I’ve been paying for telegram.
there's no backdoor in signal, this is pure FUD. give us even a single source
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I'm from Mexico, and the most used chat application is WhatsApp. It's used for EVERYTHING. I use Telegram only for contacting my family members (both my parents and my brother). They also use it only for this family chat. All my (and their) contacts use WhatsApp instead.
Now with the news that Telegram will collaborate with Twitter, I feel that I should delete it. Not that Zuck is any better than Musk, but still...
Also I don't think it's worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.
Also I don’t think it’s worth the effort to teach my parents yet another messaging app, like signal.
My friend, just set up Signal on their phones, put it in place of the Telegram app and watch them not even notice anything changed.
