A lot of privacy guides suggest avoiding Telegram. I understand that in its default mode there’s no E2EE (and no E2EE for groups at all). If people I know don’t wanttko use Signal, isn’t Telegram the lesser evil given it’s nicer privacy policy (than other popular ones)?

Say I use the FOSS version of it.

  • Pablo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The privacy policy doesn’t matter if no data is saved unencrypted or with no metatdata.

    The only thing Signal saves (which is proofed by a law case afaik) is the phone number and the account creation date.

  • dngray@lemmy.oneM
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    1 year ago

    Probably another point is that the encryption for Matrix/Element has undergone multiple audits, one in 2016 and another one of their newer rust library. Whereas telegram just has not. There was this also a not too long ago. MTProto is also used nowhere else, whereas a lot of encryption has been influenced by the Double Ratchet which is well understood.

    The other thing worth noting is that Matrix is the foundation for other products which many governments use for secure communications.

  • hiajen@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Despite you using the foss client of telegram there is no source for the server, signal has published it’s code.

  • ghariksforge@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I find Telegram to be at least as trustworthy as Signal. Signal has a lot of red/orange flags that bother me. For example, Telegram is not based in the United States, whereas Signal is.

    • randomTingler@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      An app designed by US company doesn’t represent anything related to security.

      The founder of telegram always complains that the FBI has access to signal, apple and other related chat apps.

      He suggests to use private chat, if it is confidential. The message transactions happens between peer to peer and it doesn’t go to the server. He was claiming all the privacy feature that you get from signal is the almost same as private chat. Signal stil uses the server.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Depends on your goals.

    For casual shit like sending files to yourself, bullshiting with memes, or stuff like that, the unknown factor of telegram doesn’t matter.

    But it is an unknown. We don’t know what their server code looks like. So you can’t trust that it isn’t doing things other than what it is supposed to.

    It’s a matter of preferences tbh.

      • hermit3@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        The server’s trustworthiness does not matter for Signal. The app is designed to work securely regardless of the server. Moreover, even if the server software is open source, you cannot be sure that they run the same code that they publish.

      • woobalooba@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        I don’t think that they published it as a response to the angry users. We wern’t that loud and signal had a reason to do so. That was when they worked on the cryptocurrency and the spam protection. In signals case it dosn’t matter much if the server is compromised since the important part happens on the client side. The server can only forward encrypted salad or not deliver a message. Or log the meta data of the messages. E2e will always be there, despite the server being compromised.

        • ghariksforge@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          What bothered me was that Signal fanbase was trashing Telegram for not publishing the server source, while Signal was doing this.

    • aname@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      People like you, who make fun of people who are simply ignorant but are actually trying to learn and asking questions, are cringe.