No, my argument is “this argument about a gun being used is invalid. It’s not used for now”.
I’m pretty sure if there would be enough demand for strong encryption there would be OTR forks of Telegram that would become popular. There is no such thing now. People use Telegram for stuff that is not “1on1 talks that I want to be strongly protected” in overwhelming majority of cases. People choose convenience. Encryption is useless when you are getting reported on by people in your chats or when you don’t know what you’re doing. Stupidity breaks any encryption, see that latest Signal case.
I’m Russian, have a good knowledge about protest activity. Amount of people being unlawfully arrested, prosecuted, and jailed, is abnormally big. Yet, with this amount of cases you’d guess there will be at least some links or evidence of Telegram being a career, or a link that allowed to find certain users and arrest them. Such a case would be a huge deal for a lot of people. There is no such case as far as I’m aware.
Telegram is a platform that is used by both prey and a hunter. It doesn’t actively try to protect the prey. It does contain abilities that one could utilize to protect themselves. But it certainly does not help the hunter. Hunter can try to utilize various tools that would use Telegram, and help them get the data on the prey. But that data would not be exclusive. It won’t be a result of Telegram saying “we got your request for this user, here is the data that they hide, enjoy”. It would be a public data from public chats, or data that has been manufactured using social engineering. Telegram is not a side in this process, it’s a field.
There are other platforms that really provide data (private data, or data not easily reachable) by request from authorities, we know it and avoid them. That would be VK. It was created by Durov, but now it’s operated by authorities basically.
So when I see stuff like “owner of Telegram servers had some links to FSB”, “someone could get your data if they monitor your traffic” etc., it doesn’t strike me. Those have nothing to do with the “Telegram shares your data with authorities” narrative, which remains unproven. Durov is a creator of VK that now haunts on Russians, he is not a genius I would like him to be. But Telegram administration doesn’t seem to share the data I want to keep secret with anyone, for now.
I mean the basic logic of the service was designed somewhere before its release. Data policies, promises to users are nothing if you assume services should adapt to stuff like this, at the expense of breaking those policies and promises.
Here is an old article from telegram about reasons for how it works https://telegra.ph/Why-Isnt-Telegram-End-to-End-Encrypted-by-Default-08-14
No, just personal experience (I use telegram for many years) and absence of server data implications anywhere across the issues in the past (at this time too). You can find questionable or illegal businesses in telegram with a few words, they are all public channels. Hence “no moderation” accuses mentioned in every article.
There are of course darknet-like private communities, but I assume they are not a subject of interest at this time. Authorities would need to dig very deep past all the obvious illegal stuff, and telegram shouldn’t care about resources consumed by such a small chunk of user base. Those groups will stay, as they are, private and safe, I assume, for quite some time.
Assuming things should work that way is ignorant. According to you, service owners should design and redesign their services to not store any data in order to avoid arrests. Also that a service owner should invent stuff they might not had a plan for if they have even a theoretical possibility to help identify individual users, in other words go against policies they designed at some point.
That’s a wild way of twisting the logic. Just because the platform doesn’t fall under your e2ee definition doesn’t mean they had to do something that is only possible on purely cloud services.
The reason for arrest doesn’t even have anything to do with encryption. All content that facilitates mentioned crimes is public. Handling it shouldn’t involve any backdoors or otherwise service-side decryption.
On April 16, 2018, the Russian government began blocking access to Telegram, an instant messaging service. The blocking led to interruptions in the operation of many third-party services, but practically did not affect the availability of Telegram in Russia. It was officially unblocked on June 19, 2020
Some say it was unblocked because they made a deal with Durov. Another opinion is that too many people and services including officials continued to rely on it even during the time it was blocked. Regardless, Telegram did a huge job on circumventing those blocks.
Anything goes through closed servers. Even more, serverless chat protocols tend to go through multiple users PCs (they are not open to you).
point of encrypting stuff. at least telegram supports it
I’m pretty sure telegram doesn’t support plaintext transfers.
its like saying facebook is private
I didn’t call telegram private.
Signal is not applicable when you need a public space for people to just have a discussion, like in discord. Signal clients are clunky and rely on cross sync from what I see, while telegram clients are well made and convenient to use. Even Whatsapp went away from electron so I’d choose it over signal any day.
No that’s not what I didn’t understand. The problem itself as you described it seems either a non-issue or something very few people (who’s already using telegram for some time) would care about. I don’t understand the scenario that would pose a problem for the user. The moment some account legitimately gains access to some chat is probably what should trouble you instead.
Sorry I have a hard time understanding the gist of your text. I don’t think it’s viable to be upset about what happens with access that was already acquired previously because that very fact already poses a bigger threat (which might have more to do with the nature of conversations vs how the platform works).
Whenever a user adds a new client (device), all conversations recipients should have to approve in order for them to see the chat history.
Why though? In case of a public chat or a chat with at least few dozens of users it’ll already be excessive if it could work at all.
All chat history and groups are peer 2 peer
Like really P2P or E2E? Because I know at least one chat app that is serverless but doesn’t involve E2E apparently - tox. E2E is an overkill for big group chats because it means you have to re-encrypt every message for every new user for them to see it. Else if you rely on just a fixed shared key it’s not E2E anymore (which will make some people sad and hate your app).
Telegram did have enough time to implement a server based e2e 0 knowledge encryption protocol though, it’s not really rocket science at this point.
What do you mean by server based e2e? From what I get, most people’s complain is that Telegram doesn’t support e2e in group chats, and that is what seems to be close to rocket science in my opinion. Also Telegram is historically filled with ever growing group chats, which means quite serious implications for server requirements from what I understand.
You mean you can try to guess someone’s number before they get an OTP through you in order to be the first to log into their account?
Well then you’ll also going to need their cloud password in order to find anything worth of your effort.
But anyway this is an improbable scenario, considering how vast the user base is, and if we assume telegram implemented some precautions.
Malicious service providers and cloned sim cards pose a much more serious risk if you ask me.
I’m dead set on playing online games without cheaters.
Then you should’ve stopped playing when you encountered the first cheater. The one that you knew was a cheater, at least.
Things like this create false sense of safety where you assume the game has less cheaters but in reality you can hardly tell.
Point is so that you might accidentally click on some F2P crap over there and actually spend more money than you would have otherwise. Bonus points if it’s Fortnite. They love filling it with so much confetti and showing off. Brings a lot of money.