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Comment by jeremyt | Hacker News Reader

This article is complete bullshit.

I'm a member of this group, only because I was added without my consent, which is probably the case for most of the users in the group.

Just for giggles, I watched them do a pump and dump one time, and they basically sold the pump hard, managed to get about 10 Bitcoin in some tiny market cap coin, and then one guy sold all the way back down and left the "members" of the group holding the bag.

This group is a scam, but not in the way that this article says.

Also, telegram isn't encrypted as far as I know.

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Telegram's key feature is encryption. https://telegram.org

Depends on what you mean. End-to-end encryption is an optional feature in Telegram and is disabled by default! Client-to-server encryption is not worth mentioning.

Only on phones, there is no option to encrypt on desktop.

According to their website all data is encrypted. From what I understand it's transparent and does not require enabling via an option.

This is a longstanding issue with Telegram, and deceptive advertising that a lot of people have an issue with. They use client-server encryption sure, but unlike Signal or WhatsApp, they do not employ end-to-end encryption by default; you must enable it for two person chats, and it is not available for group chats. Unless something has changed, you get full chat history when you log in from a new device or are invited to a pre-existing group, meaning that the chat history is stored on their servers, and if not in plain text it can be unencrypted for new group members or devices.

Telegram has two different encryption schemes:

    - client to server, server to 2nd client
    - full end2end encryption

The first is default and stores all communication in plaintext on telegram servers. The first scheme enables universal search, instant "cloud backup" for the whole communication of that account, instant access for newly deployed devices, etc.

The second works only on demand, is restricted to 1:1 chats, doesn't work in the browser and is generally not used that much among regular users who don't know about the feature.

I have a friend and his father who was involved in pump and dump schemes on the stock market decades ago. They probably netted over $1 million during the dot com boom. This one might not be true, but there certainly are pumpers and dumpers working on cryptocurrencies.

> Also, telegram isn't encrypted as far as I know.

Sure it is. There are (optional) E2E one-on-one secret chats. Doing E2E for a group is obviously a bit harder, as that's broadcast or multicast encryption -- think the DirecTV problem -- but the protocol itself is encrypted nonetheless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(messaging_service)#E...

Optional end to end encryption with an additionally crippled UX just means 1. no used end to end encryption in practice and 2. a worse reputation for e2e as a whole.

Telegram has it as much as Facebook Messenger has it. It's a fig leaf.

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