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Which one do you trust the most for your privacy?
(kerala.party)
Signal obviously
I've never heard anyone suggest telegram as a private service.
Iirc some people used to think so for some reason when it was first released.
I have but it never really made sense to me
If you trust Telegram you're naive. Here is a great breakdown earlier this year from Kaspersky.
https://usa.kaspersky.com/blog/telegram-why-nobody-uses-secret-chats/27662/
Signal isn't perfect either, but their mistakes are far less egregious. They also have removed some of the more egregious mistakes, ~~like needing a phone number~~ (edit: incorrect, see below) or google play services to function. It can be run on a device without Google Play Services because it only uses Google Play Services for push notifications.
Since when does Signal not require a phone number?
Earlier this year. It no longer functions as an SMS service and you now have a username instead. I think the changeover was in March or April.
Hm? Not sure which Signal you’re using. But it very much still requires a phone number to use. Usernames are not available just yet. There’s activity related to usernames in the GitHub repository, but no release yet.
They did remove the ability to send and receive SMS from their Android app. That was about last year or so.
Usernames have not been released yet. When they are released, phone number will still be required for registration, but you will be able to hide it from other people on Signal.
I knew about the SMS thing (Android only), but thought they had yet to release user names as a feature. I see no settings related to user names on iOS. The SMS retirement was to remove the ability to use Signal to replace an SMS app on Android.
Forgive me, you're correct. I stopped using it when it dropped SMS, because I had only ever able to get people on it through SMS, but at the time had read plans about eventually dropping the phone number requirement. I mixed those things up in my head.
From what I understand, they're fully invested in dropping the phone number requirement though, and some more googling says that they've had versions of Signal PNP (phone number privacy) running for a while now.
You're correct, that part hasn't actually changed over yet, but it's in the works.
They do not at this time intend to drop the phone number requirement, as they see it as an anti-spam measure. Meredith Whittaker has said as much. Phone number privacy is a project independent of requiring phone number at signup, and it just prevents other users from seeing your number.
It is planned, and “in the works” for at least two years at this point. It’ll happen, eventually.
Hehe! I was just bitching about them dropping SMS (and a crapton of users) in another post.
It used to be the perfect app to get people into secure messaging. Now it's just another chat app to most people, who tend to think "who really cares when you've got WhatsApp etc, that actually have users? Why would I want some obscure app on my phone? More shit to think about."
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Thanks for the article. That’s a really good breakdown for most arguments of Telegram propagandists. 🙌
No idea how they use GPS for push messages, but is the thing that you need to select encrypted chat and that it’s not e2ee otherwise?
GPS was short for Google Play Services, not Global Positioning System. Sorry.
Signal is always encrypted by default. Same with Matrix. Telegram you have to choose for it to be an encrypted chat, and you can't do encrypted group chats.
Ah - I’m on iOS but should have figured that out. https://emteria.com/blog/what-is-google-push-service
I still get shit video on signal, but for texts it’s ok. I use both - and don’t really trust any of them
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Telegram is, by all accounts, a privacy garbage fire. They rolled their own crypto, bless them, and as they say, anyone can design a cryptosystem that they themselves can’t break.
Telegram is not even an option.
Signal every time.
Session and Threema seem to be coming along too, but I'm quite happy with Signal as my go to messaging service for now.
I like the work they do, and the head of the Signal Foundation, Meredith Whitaker, seems very level headed and passionate about their mission.
My only concern with Signal is how they will be able to keep the lights on long term. Either they will continuously need bailouts from billionaire benefactors, or they'll have to monetize the shit out of their branding, with merch, a Patreon, probably some kind of ads and pushing even more for donations and fundraising. I hope I'm wrong but I have a feeling I'm not.
It's a not for profit, so they don't need to rake in dough, just need to keep functioning, which isn't a ton of cash for a messaging service. Wikipedia does just fine with donations, and they serve far more people.
I donate every month, and I bet there's enough that do to keep running like they are.
I love Signal, but at the end of the day they still operate a centralized service with all the drawbacks that entails. It only takes a change of leadership to kick of progressive enshitification, just look at what happened to WhatsApp. Being run by a non-profit should help, but the chance always exists with centralized control. Also their multi-device support is still not great, no official support for Android tablets for example. And idk why not, because Molly (Signal fork) recently added that without too much difficulty afaik.
Session looks really interesting imo, kinda like a decentralized and multi-device version of Signal.
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Answer: Signal
I wish people would use Signal, but Telegram is the closest thing to a sane privacy policy I've got. There are a few that luckily agreed to use Signal.
Waiting on interoperability, see how that's implemented in Signal+WhatsApp (hopefully with Telegram to so I can ditch that).
I'm also using telegram but I don't trust it. It's made by two Russian brothers who are fleeing from every country in the world. A bit to sketchy in my opinion.
Don't trust them either but that's sometimes a good sign. It's been used for illegal activities using a 3rd party client for a while in one country that I know of, which oddly enough makes me a little more comfortable. Or at least that country just couldn't get access to the data
Maybe check out beeper? I'm not sure if it has Telegram integration but it works with WhatsApp and Signal as well as Matrix iMessage and others
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As long as Signal requires my phone number, it's a hard NO for me. I don't care how good they encrypt if the first thing they do is require one of my most personal identifiers.
Threema has a very good model in that regard.
I heard from their forums it's something they're working on, so hopefully this year
You'll be able to connect with people by giving out your username instead of your phone number. You will however still be required to register using your phone number, if I'm not completely mistaken.
So you can buy a burner phone (number) to receive the registration code and you're good. Perhaps need to keep the number for migrating to new phone though.
Signal. Also, the solution to the "no-one on signal" problem is simply to refuse to use insecure platforms like WhatsApp. If people want to talk to you then, they have to download signal. They might get annoyed with you, but sometimes a bit of coercion is necessary to get people to do what's good for them.
I use both but for different purposes: Signal for group chats and Telegram for channels (news and piracy).
I trust Signal more.
Is that a real question?
Stop "trusting" your messaging platform and use matrix for fucks sake.
Stop trusting your messaging platform and use this other messaging platform! Matrix can be less secure than Signal if used improperly
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Out of those options obviously Signal.
In reality I just use SMS because everyone I know is still using that or iMessage so what's happening at my end is irrelevant to my privacy, and I wouldn't send anything I wanted to be private from a phone at all. There are no good solutions for that.
There used to be: Signal.
With Signal as your default messaging app, you could just tell people to switch to Signal and use one app. If both parties had Signal, secure messaging was used automatically.
Friends and family slowly started using Signal, because it's just a nice messaging app, plus it's potentially more secure.
Then Signal decided to tank SMS. ..and slowly, friends and family started leaving Signal, and now it's just us security-conscious folks again.
I echo this.
For the non-tech savy, having one messaging app (Signal/SMS) was excellent because a user can send a message to a contact and it would automatically use signal if the recipient was also using it and use SMS when the recipient wasn't.
Now I get SMSs and have to gently remind the contact (or just reply in signal).
Or a frantic call from family "hey I can't message my boss, I have their contact but signal isn't finding the contact" then having to explain that SMS and signal are different.
Yep. Sad day for security, though somewhat ironically.
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Signal, but no one I know uses it, no local groups are on it. It doesn't really have many features.
Meanwhile telegram has tons of people in local groups for all kinds of stuff.
At my time of adoption, Telegram had a better feature set and I wasn’t honestly super focused on the privacy minutia. Knowing what I know now…I guess Signal, but honestly I’d probably go even more niche if I was after something truly private. Like P2P messengers or something like that. I don’t really treat any messaging platform as fully private. If I really need something guaranteed to be private and I don’t want to try to convince a friend to install a new, even more obscure app, I’d probably just encrypt text files and generate keys for each other and send them via something, maybe email idk.
I would trust a Matrix client like Element / Schildichat over Signal and Telegram. But if we are only considering the latter, I would pick signal (like many other comments have mentioned).
Trust doesn't matter if no one uses these platforms to message you.
I persuaded my friends into trying other messaging platforms but they ended up flocking back to Whatsapp because their contacts are not on Signal and definitely not on Matrix. Also normies may find Element/Matrix difficult to use. Almost all of them have Telegram accounts and believes it's more private than Whatsapp, also apparently they use it as a content downloading app than a messaging app.
me: a telegram premium user reading comments 👀 guys the fact is that signal is fucking empty, there's nothing. lacking of a lot of features and one thing that is the worst (for me) is that signal isn't social and (as I saw when i used it) there aren't any public group or channels. I use Telegram for everything, as music player, as private chatting and as social app but sane and without an algorithm that tracks me, and knowing that there isn't CIA behind me watching me enjoying memes is enough. I also saw someone posting an article about Telegram not having e2e encryption, the reason for that (as I known) is the sync from all devices being difficult to have with e2e and the contents of the messages are very heavy (looking at animated emojis, reactions, stickers ecc). Of course I'd prefer to have a more secure app like Signal that has e2e and has been suggested by EU itself, but if I have to think all the thing I'm loosing to just have 1 feature, that doesn't that much to me (telegram has never given any info to policy as i know and a lot of illegal things happens on telegram proving that maybe their privacy is better than you think), I prefer to have a lot of more features. If you want to correct me I'll enjoy reading more on the platform I like.
@progettarsi @Albin9326 Telegram did actually share user info with authorities:
https://www.livelaw.in/news-updates/after-court-order-telegram-discloses-phone-numbers-ip-addresses-of-users-accused-of-sharing-infringing-material-215311
https://www.androidcentral.com/apps-software/telegram-reportedly-gives-user-data-to-german-authorities
Yet they still claim that they "have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments".
for the first i didn't really understand the circumstances (the sites requires subscribtion to read the article) for the second i guess it's normal that if you do something anti ethical you don't deserve the privacy the app offered to you. like dark web is nice for not getting censured but pedosites needs to be shutted down and people behind them punished
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None of them to be honest.
@Albin9326 Out of those, I guess Signal. Telegram has however a larger userbase and more features afaik. However, I am on Telegram and I don't think I will make the switch to Signal, rather I'll go full time on XMPP with OMEMO and PGP. OMEMO is made after the Signal protocol, and PGP is so versatile. I wish I could use it for everything, sadly, none of my friends use it and I am having a hard time explaining how it works to others.
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this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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