How can I dissuade my dad to install Telegram?
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Doesn't prevent scammers from contacting his father
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Telegram doesnt have block call and sms from unknown number?
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I wish I could quit Telegram myself, but with how much it is used for my university and recreation - it is next to impossible right now. So instead of that, I at least tried to minimize harm: treat it as a fully public space and behave as if every my conversation there is watched right now (so that the chance of saying anything remotely dangerous is minimized), use a FOSS client instead of the official one, and try to get as many individuals as possible to XMPP, Simplex or at least Signal.
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It does in the privacy settings allow you to limit it to premium users and contacts, but in my experience old people flat out refuse to alter their settings, or in general follow any security related instructions. If you can get physical access to their device and make them do it, sure.
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The next step is Anydesk and losing his life's savings
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though it can't read the chat itself.
it can. I'm not saying it does, but it absolutely can
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It's about the fact that you HAVE TO trust them to not read your plaintext messages, not see your private photos, whereas Signal is open source (ok both server and client side) and end to end encrypted so you don't really have to trust anyone.
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it can. I'm not saying it does, but it absolutely can
WhatsApp? It can by piggybacking the content on the client itself. It can't read on the server if it's as advertised as following the Signal Protocol.
But that kind of functionality either need targeted deployment, or have that built-in to the client in public channel. It doesn't matter if they does it or if they can do it, the logic of that functionality still have to exist somewhere. I would believe some nerds would pickup some indicators and had that reversed engineered long ago.
Without a solid proof, I would on the err side and refrain from claiming such.
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I understand your point and I support & contribute to FOSS. But I was specifically addressing the claim that Telegram reads all messages and sells them to the highest bidder. They don't currently, unless someone can point me towards a credible source
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But why?
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Yeah, IMHO Signal is the right balance of usability and privacy. Problem with not having a user ID is that you can't easily use the application on multiple devices at the same time and if you lose the device, or don't properly migrate to a new device, you will have to start over building your connections to others.
But the real issue with no user ID or centralized platform is discoverability. Same reason things like gpg for email never caught on. You can't just type in a person's phone number, username, or whatever and start talking to them. It only works if you have another line of communication with each person to set up the connection. This is usually the deal-beaker.
But the problem with user IDs is that anyone can create as many as they want and use them to avoid spam and abuse filtering. So that's why phone number is used by Signal as a unique identifier. It's not 100% unique, but it's good enough to deal with all but the most determined abusers.
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Telegram isn't E2E encrypted unless you use secret chats. Even WhatsApp is better than that.
