Telegram Hands U.S. Authorities Data on Thousands of Users [404 Media]
Telegram Hands U.S. Authorities Data on Thousands of Users [404 Media]
The number of data requests fulfilled by Telegram skyrocketed, with the company providing data to U.S. authorities on 2,253 users last year.
as if you needed more reasons to switch to Signal
You're telling me the messaging serving with a roll-your-own encryption that hasn't been audited and doesn't enable end-to-end-encryption by default, instead requiring you to initiate 1-to-1 "secret chats" isn't secure or trustworthy?? Holy balls!
why people don't use matrix is beyond me
open stuff scares people. plus with messengers, we're kind of bound to what our friends use. I've been slowly converting friends to Signal, and but people are very reluctant to change when the thing they have already works. Can't imagine how much friction I would hit with something like matrix.
Proton up people. And get your people on Signal or WIRE.
We’re probably the most boring people day to day and we’ve dove it for a while on general principle. Now, it feels important to have already made that shift.
I have two friends on Signal!
No one else believes me. Gonna be a weird future
I managed to get my entire family onto this service and even some friends. That said, they are almost all also using at least WhatsApp, because they are only using Signal to stay in touch with me (since I'm not on WhatsApp).
I can’t believe it! 😱
/s
I am shocked I tell you! Shocked!
Well, not that shocked.
I'm a fan of self-hosted Matrix server. You can get a dozen of bridges for those stubborn people that refuse to leave messenger/whatsapp/telegram (at a loss of encryption, and they still get your convos, but at least you don't have their spyware on your mobile and you can have everything in one app), while also being decentralized.
Self-hosting a server is actually really, really easy. It took me like half an hour, because there is an amazing Matrix Ansible Deploy script, that has a pretty easy to follow documentation, and is also one of those super-rare projects that just works. Even if I forgot to update my server for several months, I could literally "just update", and the script is clever enough to figure out what changed, tell me what I need to update in the config files (which are still only like four rows of stuff I needed to setup), and it is a really smooth experience. Even when you want to set up some bridges, for most it's literally just adding "<service>_bridge_enabled: true" to the ansible yml config file. I've already set up Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord and Messenger this way, and it was effortless.
unable to decrypt message
I've used matrix for the better part of a decade, and I get that reference.
That said, while the matrix crew have worked hard on the decryption issues, I'd much rather feel that particular pain on a federated network where I can change servers than be stuck with Signal if/when the single server's policies turn evil.
Impressive!
What is that?
What problem does it solve
Matrix is a new-ish decentralized, private, E2EE encryption protocol. It's pretty neat. It still has some issues (at least that I experience. Mainly the Android app is constantly being super slow to receive messages), but it's super promising.
They also have some goals to improve email infrastructure by integrating the matrix protocol, but not sure if that will go anywhere. I remember reading this off hand remark on their blog. Can't find the source.
As the original comment said, there's the concept ifa "bridge" which allows you to bridge other services to a matrix chat. So you could have a discord channel and matrix room bridged, as an example. A ready to go option with bridges is Beeper. But you can also setup your own stuff, as they said.
It works simillarly to an IRC. You have a server, that server can have channels, I think it can even do voice. But, unlike IRC, you can also use your server to talk to people on other servers, similar to how Fediverse works - if I have a server hosted on myserver.com, and someone else has a public room on server otherserver.com, I can either join the room@otherserver.com or message person@otherserver.com, all from my account on myserver.com.
And bridges are basically just bots that run on your own server, and by scraping websites/using API of the service your bridging they create a private room i.e Messenger@myserver.com, with subrooms per chat, and the bot then sends every message it recieves signed into your messenger account to the room, and vice versa - anything you send there will it forward to the real messenger, basically allowing you to chat with people on messenger through your matrix server. Which solves the problem of "Each of my friend is using different messaging service, can I have them all in one app? (The app being Matrix client)".
Here we go again. Once more, folks don't fucking listen when they're warned. And the ones who should have listened just got branched again.
I read that all the popular chat services provide similar information to law enforcement agencies. I don't think telegram is special in this regard.
If it’s stored on their servers then it isn’t private
I'm generally given to trust Malwarebytes regarding cybersecurity, but they don't mention at all that E2E encryption is not the default messaging style on Telegram. That, plus the article being from 2021, makes me distrustful of that source.
Signal is still the only service I am aware of that does not store logs of user messages on servers. Messages only exist on the devices of individual users.
A perfect example of why SimpleX is a great choice for messaging
Isn't simplex also funded by venture capitalists like Jack Dorsey? I don't think I'd trust then not to sell out users when it comes time to pay back the investors.
i would love an analysis of their federation because it seems built to make that impossible.
Dorsey, Zuck, Bill Gates. All the venture capital interests already got they teeth in Simplex Chat.
Herpes simplex?
Well this was always coming!