this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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[–] akilou@sh.itjust.works 105 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Signal. This isn't even up for discussion.

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[–] NENathaniel@lemmy.ca 50 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Signal seems like an obvious choice over Telegram if privacy is the exclusive priority.

I do love Telegram tho for the ability to send full-quality photos/videos, log-on with 2+ phones simultaneously, visual customization, etc

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 35 points 2 years ago (8 children)

🤔

both require phone numbers, and both concentrate metadata in a central location (Amazon servers, in the case of signal).

both sort of pretend to be free open source software, and sort of are but with a lot of caveats.

telegram doesn't even have end-to-end encryption (except for some wacky not-peer-reviewed thing in 1:1 'secret chats' which are rarely used); at least signal has it beat there.

https://simplex.chat/ is a new messenger which doesn't have any of the above problems and seems quite promising imo.

[–] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Hey fellow SimpleX enjoyer. It's still very early but only by spreading the word we can inform people about this great alternative!

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[–] randompepsi@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Telegram probably doesn’t have E2E so that people can have always active desktop sessions

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "always active desktop sessions" but for any definition I could imagine it is possible to do that while having e2ee. Many e2ee messengers have multi-device support nowadays.

Telegram doesn't need to have e2ee because they've pulled some trick of becoming widely perceived as being privacy friendly despite not actually offering any e2ee in most cases, and offering only some 🤡-protocol in the few cases where they do.

Another reason for them not to implement e2ee is that they're most likely monetizing their users content data as well as the metadata (and in more ways than just charging some types of police for access to it, which is presumably only a small fraction of their revenue).

[–] Boring@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

E2ee doesn't have to be 2 devices. It can be for any amount of endpoints as long as they have the key to decrypt the data.

For example my nextcloud instance has e2ee for my phone, computer, and tablet.

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[–] QuazarOmega@lemy.lol 22 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Why make this post hard to search for by using an image, instead of directly asking which is more trustworthy between Telegram and Signal? It just makes it look like you're sharing an article link.
The question isn't even really relevant, you can mistrust Signal and still use it because it's made in such a way that even if the server operators were malicious, they could get little data out of you.
Telegram has secret chats and already having to "toggle-on" your privacy undermines the privacy of the whole application because your profile is partially clear to the service, which leaves it open to make various inferences on you

[–] otl@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I’m still not sure whether the post is just spam.

[–] QuazarOmega@lemy.lol 5 points 2 years ago

I have this impression too with the profile's posts, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt

[–] Panda@programming.dev 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah it took me a while to figure out it was about those two apps. I thought OP meant any app.

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[–] loki@lemmy.ml 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

For people I don't know or just started talking, I give them my telegram username that's not linked to my personal phone number. For friends and family, I use signal.

Lots of opensource projects have telegram channels for updates. Not to mention news and local updates as well.

People need to incorporate a social aspect of the real world. Everyone isn't as privacy conscious as you are and you can have multiple apps for different scenarios.

If you don't ever want to meet anyone new, signal is perfect.

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[–] DavidGarcia@feddit.nl 16 points 2 years ago (6 children)

I wish we would move away from centralized messengers entirely. They are always just one law away from being banned. See: whatever the UK is doing.

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[–] umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 years ago

Using signal but planning to switch. SimpleX and XMPP are my candidates.

[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 11 points 2 years ago

I use Signal, it's about as private as I can get other normal people to use.

Signal is privacy focused Telegram is a privacy nightmare

[–] Fades@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago

Signal hands down

[–] randompepsi@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I ”trust” Signal the most because there is 100% transparency, I can look into the inner workings of the app and see what it does at all time.

Telegram is the best (in sense of privacy) message app you can actually manage to get your friends and family to use.

[–] sintrenton@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 years ago
  1. Session
  2. XMPP with OMEMO
  3. a Tox, if possible (no real asynch common)
  4. Matrix
  5. Signal
[–] Thisfox@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 years ago

My friends are already on telegram, I don't have to force change. I can make any chat more secure from the start. I am not using massive government level secrets anyhow. I mean, security is nice, but my cat photos, bad code, homegrown mint tea, and plans for the beach this coming summer are hardly a top secret problem anyway, I'm not planning a murder, I just don't want meta or facebook using them for advertising. Telegram is good enough.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Signal if I had to choose but there are plenty of other options

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[–] jeffhykin@lemm.ee 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I can generally convince people to use Telegram, but not signal. Telegram is better than SMS, GroupMe, WhatsApp, Discord, Facebook Messenger, SnapChat, etc so its what I use.

If anything, I've got hopes that Element/Matrix will get enough polish to become viable.

[–] Kimusan@feddit.dk 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I would never trust telegram. The company behind it is mostly Russian scammers. I would use the opensource alternative to signal called Molly

[–] drwho@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

One of those had an entire Ph.D thesis written on the topic of compromising the encryption used. The other did not. I use the latter.

[–] hackris@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Which one is which? I'm out of the loop :(

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[–] PropaGandalf@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

SimpleX or Briar

[–] kixik@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

1.- jami 2.- xmpp + omemo 3.- matrix 4.- signal

It's hard no one cares. Where I live everyone uses whatsapp, and unfortunately what comes closer, and still without enough users base is signal on my list, and it's the last. Jami is distributed, which makes it best in class, and there are good efforts trying to make it not to steal the whole battery, as opposed to briar. I which more people were interested on not using centralized stuff, not even what has been called lately decentralized, which means centralized but with several central points (only if everyone self hosts it would be decentralized, which is not the case). Currently I use Jami and signal, though I've tried all those, plus briar, plus tox, even telegram...

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[–] Shaul@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 years ago

First choice is always talk on SimpleX, second is Signal/Molly for something easier, there is no other app that I use.

[–] GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago

Default Signal is better although Telegram has Secret Chat. I love thar Telegram let's you use a username to connect to others without exposing your mobile number to contacts.

But I have way more friends who actually use Telegram than Signal. No idea why although for many the massive community groups are used by a lot communities for staying in touch, as well as safety/security groups in communities.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 years ago
[–] oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I trust Signal more, but the main reason I use Signal is because a lot of people I know use it. I would personally love if Briar caught on more, but given that isn't really happening SimpleX is your best bet.

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[–] TheFrirish@jlai.lu 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I prefer using telegram but in terms of privacy? Signal no discussions.

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