What are the reasons to use Signal over Telegram

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I’m not here to promote Signal, but last time I checked it no longer required a phone number.

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I won't be popular in this thread, but I don't fight this battle anymore. Telegram beats Signal in virtually every aspect of user experience. If a person is unlikely to be convinced that e2ee is worth taking all the UX hits, I don't try anymore.

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Use signal and matrix. Telegram is as people pointed out usually unencrypted. Also unverifieble in its code . Signal is easy uses but phonenumbers ( you can register a fake one however) but always EE2E. Matrix does not require a number at all. But definatly is a bit harder to get started with and are therefore harder to get your contact to use it.

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There is also desktop clients for both.

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I keep seeing this claim, but I may be too much of a computer nerd to notice when using them both. What does Telegram do better and how?

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I may be too much of a computer nerd to notice when using them both
That's probably true of just about everyone on Lemmy.

What does Telegram do better and how?
User experience, like I said. How many less technically inclined people do you know who will understand why they have no message history in Signal after moving devices? Yes, they could have kept it if they'd had backups enabled and moved the archive over and restored from it, but it's too late now, their entire contact list has been notified that their safety number's changed (another aspect we get to attempt to explain). It's a bummer.

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Telegram rolls their own crypto. That should be the biggest red flag by far. I say this as a telegram user

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So they have Carbons? Took them long enough.

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If they haven’t already, SimpleX registers a URI handler, you could put an ID in a vCard just like your contacts on XMPP show up in a messaging client.

They reason this happens more often with Signal is a) Signal requires a phone number (which is not good for your privacy) b) your contact is more likely to put in their phone number but many forget to add other IM protocols to their vCard & the default contact managers do not make this very discoverable.

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Matrix is centralized around Matrix.org or servers they run tho. Since the protocol is a big data/metadata sync by design & medium–large-sized servers are expensive to run, almost all of metadata is with Matrix.org—of which was originally funded my Israeli intelligence & I wouldn’t be surprised if they were getting data out of it to this day.

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If we care about the planet & sustainability, we would not be recommending a eventual-consistency model for chat communications. Matrix’s protocol is so wasteful & expensive.

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This entire article is guessing at hypothetical backdoors. Its like saying that AES is backdoored because the US government chose it as the standard defacto symmetrical encryption.

There is no proof that Signal has done anything nefarious at all.

As an outsider, I mean isn't that the same for news coverage for chinese/russian backdoors, but everyone believes it without any proof.

Why is US company being a US honeypot a big surprise, and its government recommending it not a big red flag? but it is when China recommends wechat? Can't we be critical and suspicious of both authoritarian countries?

Do you have access to Signal servers to verify your claims by any chance? Afaik their servers are running modified codebase, and third party apps cannot use them. So how do you claim anything that goes behind closed doors at all? Genuinel curious.

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Further, they're hosted in Germany, so they must still follow German law and court requests.

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Telegram for random public chatter/file storage(with password lock), talking to strangers without giving them your number. Signal for personal/private conversations.

Your device can handle 2 apps and don't give them permissions willy nilly. Geez, every one of these posts just wants to start a flame war.

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Note that this is sent at time of syncing rather than being in an archive on the company’s server 24/7

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Apparently I still don't have one. Haven't had a phone number for about a decade. No SMS spam, no "survey" calls; nothing.

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Get what you are trying to say but both are still encrypted. They simply aren't end to end encrypted.
So the messages are private. Until obviously the company servers get hacked or police raided and the keys to the encryption get stolen.
You are protected against this in E2E encryption. True.

Ii guess telegram once was the alternative to whatsapp, then made maany more featutes abailable in fast time paces which led to another bunch of migrators.

Now noone wants to move away because why? For the usual end user there is no negative to them.

I am fully on your side and am using signal and matrix and try to migrate as many people as possible but its hard.

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How is setting up e2e on matrix these days?

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Get what you are trying to say but both are still encrypted. They simply aren't end to end encrypted. So the messages are private.

You explain exactly why messages are not private: if they are not end-to-end encrypted, by definition Telegram can read all the messages. That's exactly what end-to-end is meant to protect against. So in that aspect, Signal truly is private and Telegram maybe, if you activate their private chats but I've not seen security experts praise their algorithm, compared to their regular endorsement for Signal.

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Reding the link now
" The reason the US government hasn’t tried to block or hinder Signal, is because it’s satisfied with the amount of information Signal can provide to it."
Well the metadata of who is contacting who can be acquired by other means. CIA also like to have secure tools. Just like you can argue the CIA connection in the TOR case . It doesn't mean backdoors and so on.

Centralisation argument sure, but that issue will always be there at some level, even for matrix.

Phonenumber discovarability argument is no longer correct as it is possible to use signal and not disclosing it to contacts, but yes still to signal.

I have a signal account with a fake number so that is an option as well, if even more work than matrix process.

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What are the reasons to use Signal over Telegram