this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Finally got rid of telegram, congratulations to me (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 6 months ago by Gooey0210@sh.itjust.works to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

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[–] LordKitsuna@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Im_old@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] ne0phyte@feddit.de 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Afaik the protocol is documented[1] and the clients are open source[2].

No code available for the backend though.

[1] https://core.telegram.org/mtproto

[2] https://telegram.org/apps#source-code

[–] Titou@feddit.de 0 points 6 months ago

You forget to mention they gave informations to german police, seems like they forget the point of the app

[–] SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, signal is the only thing I would ideally use. But whatsapp is still a better second messenger than telegram.

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

But whatsapp is still a better second messenger than telegram.

You didn't mean that.

[–] SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm sorry. It might be meta owned, but its metadata theyre stealing. I still trust the e2e encryption. Naively perhaps

[–] Vilian@lemmy.ca 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

telegram e2e encryption is open-source, whatsapp not

[–] Anamana@feddit.de 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] pipariturbiini@sopuli.xyz 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Anamana@feddit.de 0 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The final red flag was as that allegedly Russian authorities were messing with people's deleted messages.

I don't know about "Russian authorities", but the fact remains that if you can login anywhere and see your messages, then your ~~public~~ private key is stored in the server.

Since Telegram requires authorization from an extant connection, I don't know if that means your public key isn't stored on the servers and it's being sent from the authorizing device, or if that device is merely authorizing the Telegram servers to transmit that key to the new device.

Since they have a full e2e chat feature (Private Chats), I'm going to assume the latter.

So anyone who can get those keys can gain access to your chats.

I still say Telegram is far superior to anything from Fuckbook/Meta, because it's not integrated into everying you do (even those of us who've never once been on Facebook, and yet have ghost profiles), not to mention the Facebook app integrated into Android on many vendor phones.

Even so, know Telegram for what it is - not ideal, just better than WhatsApp, and a step along the path to moving to more secure and privacy-respecting apps.l

[–] bleistift2@feddit.de 0 points 6 months ago

then your public key is stored in the server

Did you mean private key?

[–] Kiryu@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

[–] Gooey0210@sh.itjust.works -1 points 6 months ago

Telegram came out a year earlier in that signal, and because immediately popular amongst young people and drug dealers in Russia

[–] FunnyFondue576@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Good for you. I still don't know how to move my friends and relatives to Signal. Any tips with that?

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Delusion6903@discuss.online 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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."

[–] Hanrahan@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

I did something similar and just sent a link to Signal when IPhone friends and family SMS'd me, worked....eventually :) (am on Android)

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 months ago

That's freaking epic. Love it.

[–] Ascend910@lemmy.ml 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I have been living under a rock, what happened to Telegram?

[–] ritchie@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] ris@feddit.de 0 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] progettarsi@feddit.it 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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 nothing