The company has updated its FAQ page to say that private chats are no longer shielded from moderation.
Telegram has quietly removed language from its FAQ page that said private chats were protected from moderation requests. The change comes nearly two weeks after its CEO, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France for allegedly allowing “criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.”
Earlier today, Durov issued his first public statement since his arrest, promising to moderate content more on the platform, a noticeable change in tone after the company initially said he had “nothing to hide.”
“Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform,” he wrote in the statement shared on Thursday. “That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon.”
Translation: Durov is completely compromised and will do whatever NATO tells him to do. Do not trust in the security of Telegram, which frankly was never that good to begin with. And do not trust anything else even remotely connected to the company or Durov personally.
I don't trust Signal one bit. Never have. The original creator Moxie Marlinspike has been neck-deep in Silicon Valley culture for decades. During his tenure in charge of Signal's technical development he made a lot of strange decisions. Forcing his "Mobilecoin" cryptocoin scam in the standard Signal app. Denigrating the concept of warrant canaries. Refusing to allow non-Signal-owned servers to communicate with Signal apps. Requiring that only Signal apps distributed on Google and Apple's app stores be allowed to communicate with Signal-owned servers, etc. Requiring phone numbers for account creation. I don't buy for a moment that he or his colleagues are pro-privacy activists.
It's dumb, but it's also not really marketed and is easy to forget that it exists even when using the app daily.
He consulted with lawyers and they said that removing/not updating a warrant canary would likely have the same legal consequences as violating the court order by simply announcing the subpoena. Also, a warrant canary is nearly useless even in the ideal case because it just says that they got a secret warrant, not what the subpoena was for or any other details. You wouldn't know the exact date, what was requested, or even what country made the request. And it becomes even less useful after receiving the first secret warrant.
Also, not all subpoenas are secret. Signal posts all government requests, including the full documents of all communication between Signal and the government, at https://signal.org/bigbrother
And, since Signal is E2EE, they don't have any useful data to share when they receive a warrant anyway.
Signal isn't federated and it's not intended to be. If you're using a private server, you'd only be able to talk to people also on your servers. If that's a feature you want, you can simply choose a different messaging solution. It's a design decision, not a security flaw.
Here's an official apk download: https://signal.org/android/apk
Yeah, it's kinda weird. They started as an SMS app which obviously requires a phone number and just haven't got rid of the requirement. They added usernames and hide your phone number by default, so you can at least message others without sharing your phone number.
In the end, phone numbers streamline signup and account management and Signal is meant as a texting replacement, not a social media/texting hybrid like Telegram or Discord, so phone numbers help the less tech-literate to use the app. As long as the encryption is sound, phone numbers don't really add that much security risk and the point is to bring high-grade encrypted messaging to everyone, not to be an ultra-anonymous hardened messaging platform to avoid state-level targeted attacks.
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All good points!
I think Signal likely could be used to avoid state-level hacks and to be ultra-anonymous, but in that case you'd want to take extra precautions like using a burner and, to your point about metadata, there are other ways to identify who you are than your phone number, especially if you're an organization comprised of many people. Realistically, anyone that has a real need to protect themselves against state-level threats either has the resources available to do so properly with their own tech, or is so hopelessly outmatched that it doesn't matter regardless.
Imo encryption is more about being a roadblock than an impenetrable shield. Even for organizations with infinite money and technological expertise, there are easier ways to identify you and get your data than breaking even moderately good security implementations. News stories of feds getting access to Signal convos are all about getting access to a phone and simply reading the messages, not breaking encryption or setting up honeypots on Signal servers.
The beauty of E2EE is that you don't need to trust the servers at all, once you verify that you're actually connected to the person you intend to be. Doesn't matter if the server is trying to con you, keys are generated locally and everything is signed and encrypted locally before being sent off-device. As long as you can verify that the app you're running matches the published source code, and that the source code isn't duping you, you should be good to go. I haven't reviewed the Signal protocol in a few years, but I don't believe there are any servers that require trust, like say SSL has.
As for hostility towards 3rd party apps, it's pretty common for orgs to want everyone to only use first-party software when interacting with their service. It's nearly ubiquitous today. I think probably all of us on Lemmy prefer platforms that allow for 3rd party apps, but there are legitimate reasons not to and I wouldn't say it's a security flaw.
I think this ties back to the encryption vs wrench scenario. If you're organizing a protest, you're screwed no matter what you use because the cops just need to join the group themselves or take someone's phone. Self-destructing messages can prevent this, and hostility towards 3rd party apps help in that case since you can be more certain that nobody is using some shoddy implementation that ignores self-destruction or improperly deletes things.
If you're organizing a military operation, you shouldn't be using civilian messaging apps full stop.
If you're somewhere in between like a cartel or terrorist organization, please stay off any app I use to send memes to friends.
100%, but it's a hell of a lot less useful than Facebook Messenger, my grandma can set it up in 5 minutes without any trouble, I don't have to maintain any servers, and know that it's supported by well funded top-notch engineers that aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
Literally same.
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