That's great when my bank only uses sms for mfa though.
Seriously, bank and credit card companies need to get with the program more than me and my friends.
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
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Steam. The store front I get my video games from. Has 2-factor authentication with a short time rotating code. To secure my Steam account.
My bank uses SMS and "security questions" aka personal trivia questions.
Easy to guess with some social engineering
Or literally anyone who knows you. It's based on the idea that strangers are the ones who will try to screw you over but everyone knows that it's people who you know that end up screwing you over in most cases. So security questions are basically useless in all those cases.
While I agree with you, some people answer these questions with deliberately incorrect answers. If my closest friend tried to compromise my bank account with my security questions, he'd get them all wrong (and even he doesn't know my wrong answers).
Still a bad design, though.
Right? Had a bank account once, where the login password could only have up to 8 characters. And only digits.
Lucky, mine is 6 (yes, right now in 2024)
I just checked my KeePass and turns out I still have the entry in the recycle bin.
It was 5 digits. Admittedly, that was "back in 2012," but still. For shame, Bank Austria!
Swiss (Cheese) Bank?
The only bank that allowed me to use totp was a credit union. You'd think the rich ass banks could afford to hire a developer to set up good MFA.
Yeah, and just for a few months. TOTP really isn't that complicated...
That's a huge part of why I use my brokerage, Fidelity, as my main bank, they support Symantec VIP TOTP. I prefer my regular TOTP solution, but this us miles ahead of literally every other bank I've used.
That's wild
Ok FBI, let me know which ones to use
Are there still apps that arnt encrypted?
Telegram, for all their security claims, is basically not actually encrypted at all.
This is incorrect. Telegram is not end to end encrypted by default. But it is encrypted to and from their servers.
yeah, that means not encrypted. When speaking to a web server, you are one end, and the server is the other. Tls ensures that there isn't a man-in-the-middle.
In case of telegram, you are one end another user is the other end. Telegram themselves are, by design, a man-in-the-middle in this case. I'm not concerned about a different middleman intercepting communications between me and telegram. I'm concerned about any middleman (which includes telegram themselves) intercepting communications between me and my friend.
So no, telegram chats are not encrypted by default. Telegram can read them.
TLS isn't sufficient for messaging apps in 2024
Except Telegram doesn't use TLS :) They use MTProto.
This is not me endorsing Telegram. I'm just pointing out your mistake. Telegram has other issues but it definitely does have transport encryption.
The above commenter said that their end-to-end MTProto protocol is not enabled by default.
Defaulting to just using transport encryption like TLS on a messaging app isn't sufficient in 2024.
MTProto is not end-to-end. MTProto is their obfuscated client-server transport encryption.
What the commenter above is referring to is Telegram defaulting to saving your messages on the server in plaintext. You can use a "secret chat" which enables end-to-end encryption, but that is separate from MTProto.
Your sentiment is correct though. Messages should not be visible in plaintext to the server.
I dont know much about it, but Wikipedia says that MTProto is specifically for "secret chats":
For encrypted chats (branded as Secret Chats), Telegram uses a custom-built symmetric encryption scheme called MTProto.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Architecture
Maybe Wikipedia is misleading here
You're right, it is misleading. There are different "flavours" of MTProto. See here:
https://core.telegram.org/mtproto
This page deals with the basic layer of MTProto encryption used for Cloud chats (server-client encryption). See also:
Secret chats, end-to-end-encryption
End-to-end encrypted Voice Calls
(The major difference is simply whether the server and client share a key or two clients)
Luckily I misuse Telegram only as a system notification program.
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There are many where the server owners can see the messages, just not anyone else between the sender and receiver.
Threema and Signal are good options that don’t do this.
Signal being an American company is also problematic.
These two are the best balance of security/convenience, however.
You can create and run your own Signal server if you don't trust Signal.
Interesting. Are the server and client open source? Is a self-hosted server interoperable with the main ones?
Signal is completely open source and auditable by anyone: https://github.com/signalapp
if you were to create your own clone, it would not interoperate with the real one.
server location and legal jurisdiction shouldn't matter for any truly secure messenger
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1/20/25: FBI Orders Americans to Use Unencrypted Messaging Apps
Why not Matrix ? Its E2E nit just TLS and also it prevents vendor lock in. This way chosing a providor is really about trust and not also about having to chose the same thing what your friends use
silly question maybe but after researching China a bit for a few days, I'm genuinely curious:
I like supporting the LGBTQ cause, which I could see making me want to avoid Trump probing, but from what I researched, China gov is not against LGBTQ. So is there any specific reason I should fear China looking at my stuff?
Is it basically if I have account info in messages they would hack my accounts?
https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/how-crackdown-transformed-lgbtq-activism-china
Looks like they're cracking down on LGBT
interesting! thanks for sharing!
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