Many reasons why Telegram is (most probably) safe. There are a lot of black/gray area stuff here like drugs etc. That people (i don't support them) trust Telegram showing us it's secure.
And the Telegram's owner (Pavel Durov) relocated from Russia for ever due to issues with his previous project (VK) when goverment asked to show private/personal data.
The only real reason ex-Soviet drug users keep using Telegram is they are careless and it's popular. Another suspicion of many is that most of the drug trade in Russia is under FSB "protection", and they have no reason to kill the goose that lays golden eggs. Drug dealers only run Telegram for their clientele though, with anonymous SIMs and Tor; for more serious purposes, they and other criminals use more secure communication channels, XMPP in particular.
>the Telegram's owner (Pavel Durov) relocated from Russia for ever due to issues with his previous project (VK)
...while keeping Telegram developers in Moscow and regularly showing up there himself. (no idea whether it's still true, probably not)
I can't say with 100% confidence that Telegram itself is compromised, though, there's no clear evidence for that. Some smoke probably, but no fire, sketchy indeed.
In China, too. With a more aggressive approach: just remove the app before going out.
Literally nobody in their sane mind does that.
No, if some people trust some service, it doesn't mean that this service is secure.
I haven't seen anyone show that Telegram uses bad encryption. I've seen plenty of people repeat the "don't make your own crypto implementation" mantra, but just like the "don't optimize prematurely" truthism it's not always true. Where's the exploits?
And then there's another reason, most communication isn't particularly sensitive. Dinner suggestions, memes, thoughts on the latest season of The Crown... I chat about the same things that I talk about on the unencrypted phone "line", or at a cafe surrounded by strangers. If Telegram turns out to be unsafe, I wouldn't have any issue with continuing using it for everyday stuff, and using a different app for secrets. Compartmentalizing is probably a good idea anyway, I use my real name on Telegram with my family.
Literally a week ago in India: https://torrentfreak.com/telegram-discloses-user-details-of-...
> I haven't seen anyone show that Telegram uses bad encryption
The bigger point isn't that Telegram uses "bad encryption", it's that it isn't encrypted by default in all scenarios. This is a conscious choice they've made.
> If Telegram turns out to be unsafe, I wouldn't have any issue with continuing using it for everyday stuff, and using a different app for secrets.
Great, now every time you're talking on the "other" app the State knows you're talking about something sensitive. The point of encrypting everything is to ensure that encryption - by itself - is not a sign of illicit activity.
That wasn't by breaking the encryption, it was by court order.
> it isn't encrypted by default in all scenarios.
It is using encryption in all cases, but it's not using end to end encryption in all cases. I know plenty of people will argue that it's the same thing as no encryption, but by using encryption you then force anyone who want's to eavesdrop to go through court to get the data from Telegram, and not just listening on the same Wifi network. Saying it's unencrypted is disingenuous.
How successful have those protestors been? In each case it seems like the government was always one step ahead of them and all there. So I don’t think it’s a giant leap to think they’re communications are compromised.
The FBI says they can't get message content, and only IP and phone number for convicted terrorists.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2021/12/heres-what-da...
End-to-end encrypted (by default and for all chats) messengers exist, but Telegram simply isn‘t one of them.
Other than Signal, Telegram is one of the very few messengers that happens to be both E2E capable in some way, open source, and sufficiently heard of that people won't give you weird looks when you suggest downloading the app.
Telegram is not end-to-end encrypted in any practical scenario (you can‘t use it on multiple devices, for example), their end-to-end encryption uses some ridiculous/scary homebrew cryptography ("with the power of 5 math PhDs and a bug bounty worth millions!!!"), and being open source doesn‘t help a bit if the service provider just gets everything in plaintext anyway by default.
I'm not willing to have all of my personal communication sitting in plaintext controlled by an unprofitable company founded by Russians and located in the UAE. Even if they're not compromised, that's an incredible target for a state actor.
I haven't looked at Telegram's blockchain thing yet, but the non-blockchain version is not very private (and the same applies to Signal).
xx Messenger (https://elixxir.io/; source https://git.xx.network/elixxir/) has very solid encryption, metadata protection and decentralized gateways. But it's less polished, blockchain-based, and has few users.
People complain about the use of blockchain in messengers, but they offer no solutions on how to address app sustainability or eliminate metadata centralization, censorship, or risk of having your data handed to the government by the organization running the network. We'll see how sustainable your centralized donation-ware is.
Btw somebody mentioned "only" 1:1 encrypted chats: who does it better?
xx Messenger can do group chats but you can't add people to a chat after the group has been created.
What are you missing on Signal? The ability to sign up without a phone number would indeed be great, but other than that, they seem to be collecting effectively nothing.
> People complain about the use of blockchain in messengers, but they offer no solutions on how to address app sustainability
If this is about funding, just make it paid/freemium! Effectively that's the same thing as launching an own token or even blockchain, just without all the complexity of launching and sustainably managing what might easily become a pyramid or Ponzi scheme and/or a security in scope of regulations.
> Btw somebody mentioned "only" 1:1 encrypted chats: who does it better?
Signal, and everything based on it (e.g. WhatsApp), Matrix, and Threema immediately come to mind, and they all don't have this weakness:
> but you can't add people to a chat after the group has been created.
If you want really safe comms I don't know if any popular chat app would do the job, maybe signal? don't know much about it however.
For the few that don't I have IRC, email, sms, phone calls...
Never used WhatsApp, Telegram etc
What I am saying: it depends on your individual bubble and where you come from. ;-)
- Accumulate data and try to use it for mass manipulation
These are from the top of my head.
What makes you stating that so undoubtedly?
Why ? Are you russian ? Do you travel to Russia ? A lot of people also trust WhatsApp and Signal for their communications and i'm sure that no western government will ever spy on them. I'm joking.
Just be aware that encryption is not useful when your OS provider has access to your keys.
That the cia has got far more leverage on it than any other foreign powers
It is used fantastically by them on the current iran unrest and as a medium to pierce against Russian information spheres
Where zunzuneo failed telegram has succeeded and blossomed
also, Telegram has no ties to Russia
who had his billion dollar business (vk.com) stolen by the russian government, left the country and acquired cirizenship elsewhere
it's a pretty good indicator that he is not a putin's stooge
>most of the engineering team is Russian. The founder visits Russia regularly. I assume their non-resident Russian engineers visit Russia too.Most of their user base is Russian.
is Microsoft an Indian company? the CEO is Indian, half the engineers are Indian, yada yada yada
>And they have an agreement with the Russian government not to be blocked if they cooperate on combatting terrorism.
I got the impression that it was just a way out for the russian government to give up on trying to block it, after they have repeatedly failed to do so