It was a many months transition, and it’s finally done
Fun thing, you can actually make a backup of all* your messages, groups, contacts, etc. So before leaving you can have all of your data in case you need that one contact or something
The final red flag was as that allegedly Russian authorities were messing with people’s deleted messages. Not for the first time there are news that they could read, modify, delete, see location, and etc. Screw it, this is unsafe, I’m out.
Also, these days telegram is really at the state of a pile of garbage, bloated, buggy, and shady messenger.
Why did Telegram get so popular in the privacy scene compared to Signal in the first place? To my knowledge Signal came out first and never had a history of breaches or leaks.
I can’t speak for the privacy scene but in my country it’s pretty popular merely because of anonimity (which boils down to not having to use a phone number) and Discord-like server/groups. For porn and other NSFW content, it is pretty popular.
Ah I did not know Signal required a phone number compared to Telegram not requiring one. Thanks.
Telegram still requires a phone number to sign up, but they have had usernames that can be used to contact people without needing their phone number. Signal is only now finally rolling out usernames.
I assumed the popularity was not in the privacy scene, but rather in general population, just because of usability. It is just a more usable alternative to Whatsapp or VKontakte. It is pretty much the default messaging platform for young people like Whatsapp is for older ones.
in some circles yeah.
In Germany it actually became famous because it allowed for huge groups and it’s where covid misinformation breeding grounds took off. People thought you were a nutjob if you had telegram lol.
Which, while that is the dumbest reason to reject a chat app, at least meant that Signal was able to get more popular with uhhh smarter folks.
I think the big reason that nobody’s mentioned yet is simply that they were earlier. Back when projects like Tox and Matrix were first starting to pop up, telegram was already fully formed. Signal didn’t come until at least a year later and didn’t have feature parity until several years later. Telegram by contrast was a much closer experience to WhatsApp and Messenger, making the transition much easier, particularly for low-tech knowledge users.
Maybe because it offers public chats and channels? Something other apps lack.
Also the best desktop experience out of all apps I’ve tried.
Telegram came out a year earlier in that signal, and because immediately popular amongst young people and drug dealers in Russia
I deleted telegram long ago, but not my account, just the apps.
As of recent, I wanted to log back in and actually delete my phone number from there, so there’s no more association.
I can’t login. I download the app, and it sends a verification code through Telegram and won’t do SMS, but I’m not logged in at all so I can’t get the code.
I’m stuck there. I contacted support and they’re yet to respond. :p
Also, these days telegram is really at the state of a pile of garbage, bloated, buggy, and shady messenger.
Every messenger is.
Nobody in this entire thread of FUD has posted a single link to support any claim of Russian data intrusion.
I have been living under a rock, what happened to Telegram?
It is not considered a good alternative as a messaging app for privacy folks and because the source code is not open, it is not E2E encrypted by default (you need to start a secret chat or something to make your conversation encrypted) if I remember correctly.
You remember incorrect. All Clients are open source:
Telegram apps are open source and support reproducible builds. Anyone can independently verify that Telegram apps you download from App Store or Google Play were built using the exact same code that we publish
In Fdroid there are also forks. But yes, their servers are closed source and centralized.
Still its not recommended. It requires Phone number and as you said its E2ee is not on by default and is not soooo good.
So what do you use to send, receive and store 2GB ish files to other people?
Edit: Would be great if some non-selfhosting solution was suggested here.
Magic wormhole, Bitorrent
How do you share using BitTorrent. I had a lot of problem sharing with BT, especially on tracker choosing reasons and port problems.
tg premium user here, WTF? i tought telegram was privacy respectfull and pretty secure, what changed/happened? that’s not the first post i saw abt It. also, any alternatives? with almost same features and as many channels/groups as telegram ofc like don’t suggest me signal or Matrix nobody Is on that platforms…
EDIT: lmao people Just downvoted me for asking… what a world
Telegram hasn’t been secure since basically day 1. IIRC it went something like
Security experts: Never roll your own cryptography.
Telegram: We rolled our own cryptography!
Security experts: Don’t. And it’s broken.
Telegram: uhhhh… We fixed it.
Security experts: It still looks really bad. Stop it.
Telegram: says nothingSecurity is a spectrum. Telegram has never been the most secure alternative, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any security.
From my first link
The safest way to use Telegram would be not to. However, if you have no other choice, the best approach would be to use a clean burner phone to communicate with another clean burner phone. Change them regularly.
…
In short, for better protection, use anything else.
Good for you. I still don’t know how to move my friends and relatives to Signal. Any tips with that?
Do what I did. Let everyone you care about on TG that you’re closing that crap, with your reasons for doing so. Inform them of your moving to signal, session, whatever. Be clear that, otherwise, they can try calling you and wish them good luck. Close TG on the day you set as deadline. I did that and whomever didn’t get a Signal or Session account has to call me. I’ve never looked back.
My family is all on iMessage. I told them if they didn’t install Signal I wouldn’t reply to their texts.
At first, whenever they texted I would just reply with something that looked automated like “This user is no longer available via text message. Please install Signal if you wish to communicate.”
I did something similar and just sent a link to Signal when IPhone friends and family SMS’d me, worked…eventually :) (am on Android)
That’s freaking epic. Love it.
Easy! Just replace their usual SMS app with Signal, and then every contact they have that does use Signal is private and secure!
Oh. Wait. That’s exactly the functionality that Signal removed in their effort to ensure that Signal is never widely adopted…
I didn’t agree with their decision at all at the time, but now that I realize they made it a little while after it gained widespread adoption and people stopped using it because “Signal isn’t actually secure!” … seems like people were expecting a secure messenger to be, well, secure. So they would chat about anything and everything thinking “I am using a secure messenger, these messages can’t be read…” and tech ignorance is a dangerous thing if you’re trying to be secure. I would’ve preferred a colored window and un-closable message for SMS chats, but oh well. I like that they’ve introduced usernames so you don’t have to give out your real number.
And that irony now is that messenger on Android is RCS compliant and currently has this exact functionality, except it’s less trustworthy.
Once again I’m using one messenger and everyone else who’s using an RCS messenger gets encrypted, but SMS (clearly marked as such) is a viable fallback.
Gonna have to disagree. Telegram is the ONLY chat app with ACTUALLY NATIVE code clients on desktop and mobile. Its the only one that isn’t website in a box trash that’s slow heavy and buggy. I use discord mostly because it’s where everyone is but i fucking hate everything about it and wish people would use telegram.
If you think other chat apps don’t read/process metadata from your dms and such your an idiot. Nothing is safe short of self hosted matrix with full E2E encryption or similar and ain’t nobody doing that.
Nothing is safe short of self hosted matrix with full E2E encryption or similar and ain’t nobody doing that.
Well, I’m doing that. But I’m nobody, so I guess your point still stands 😅
But also, I don’t judge the chats mainly by their client, but the protocol. Telegram is not open and so can’t be audited properly, that’s my concern.
Honestly, signal is the only thing I would ideally use. But whatsapp is still a better second messenger than telegram.
But whatsapp is still a better second messenger than telegram.
You didn’t mean that.
I’m sorry. It might be meta owned, but its metadata theyre stealing. I still trust the e2e encryption. Naively perhaps
telegram e2e encryption is open-source, whatsapp not
Almost no one uses telegram e2e, because it’s not automatically activated. Also group chats are not e2e.
I still like to use telegram tho.
Also doesn’t Whatsapp just use the signal protocol for e2e?
Also Telegram’s E2EE chats don’t work on desktop apparently, and you are not able to see message contents in the notification (which is a plus or minus depending on you)
Asked a friend earlier today if we could use secret chat. He declined because he mostly chats on desktop, and apparently wants to see messages from notifications while driving.
Jep, all of this is true. I have two chats with some people because of that.
Also you can’t search for words within e2e chats, which is a pain in the ass sometimes.
