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What's your opinion on telegram from a foss and privacy perspective? (feddit.it)
submitted 3 years ago* by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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I see i can find a foss version on f-droid, and that's something not a lot of social networks can have, i don't really like all the crypto bullshit and ads testing they've been up to lately, but still looks better to me compared to what Reddit have done lately or what other platforms have done in these years..

I don't know about their privacy feature, but i wouldn't trust their chat as for as far as i knew they were not end to end encrypted some time ago (except for secret chats).

Anyway it still looks like one of the at least still decent platforms out there, or am i wrong?

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[–] 5 points 3 years ago (2 children)

Somewhere between WhatsApp and Signal. It has FOSS clients, hands over user data only under extraordinary circumstances (terrorism and child abuse, afaik), and runs on pretty much any hardware. The last two points make it very popular in eastern Europe and most of Asia. The main problem with Telegram is that normal chats are not end to end encrypted, and instead use a weaker encryption algorithm. Secure chats are e2e encrypted, but are not on by default.

Overall, it is used by opposition parties in countries like Russia, Belarus and Iran for day to day stuff, so it is fairly secure. Of course, if you are a reporter or activist who has a lot of enemies, you could get something even more secure.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    Overall, it is used by opposition parties in countries like Russia, Belarus and Iran for day to day stuff, so it is fairly secure

    I think this is overselling the "privacy" aspect of storing your personal messages on a server where the admins have complete access without you ever knowing if/what they're doing with it.

    Make no mistake, Telegram is as "private" as Facebook. They have access to all your data and as that data grows, it grows in value. It's only a matter of time before they directly or indirectly exploit this (or get compromised) and all your "privacy" is out the window.

    No hate towards Telegram, I'm sure its a great platform, but people should at least be aware that it's basically the Pepsi to Facebook's Coke.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    It isn't perfect, but I think there is a difference between a company that currently gives user data to advertisers and authoritarian governments, and one that hasn't done any of that so far. There sure is a 'trust me bro' element, but they have had to relocate from Russia to Dubai because they refused to hand over opposition politicians' chats. That's a pretty big commitment to privacy.

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