“Telegram is not a private messenger. There’s nothing private about it. It’s the opposite. It’s a cloud messenger where every message you’ve ever sent or received is in plain text in a database that Telegram the organization controls and has access to it”
“It’s like a Russian oligarch starting an unencrypted version of WhatsApp, a pixel for pixel clone of WhatsApp. That should be kind of a difficult brand to operate. Somehow, they’ve done a really amazing job of convincing the whole world that this is an encrypted messaging app and that the founder is some kind of Russian dissident, even though he goes there once a month, the whole team lives in Russia, and their families are there.”
" What happened in France is they just chose not to respond to the subpoena. So that’s in violation of the law. And, he gets arrested in France, right? And everyone’s like, oh, France. But I think the key point is they have the data, like they can respond to the subpoenas where as Signal, for instance, doesn’t have access to the data and couldn’t respond to that same request. To me it’s very obvious that Russia would’ve had a much less polite version of that conversation with Pavel Durov and the telegram team before this moment"
It’s also important to continue educating people about the fact that Signal is incredibly problematic as well, but not in the way most people think.
The issue with Signal is that your phone number is metadata. And people who think metadata is “just” data or that cross-referencing is some kind of sci-fi nonsense, are fundamentally misunderstanding how modern surveillance works.
By requiring phone numbers, Signal, despite its good encryption, inherently builds a social graph. The server operators, or anyone who gets that data, can see a map of who is talking to whom. The content is secure, but the connections are not.
Being able to map out who talks to whom is incredibly valuable. A three-letter agency can take the map of connections and overlay it with all the other data they vacuum up from other sources, such as location data, purchase histories, social media activity. If you become a “person of interest” for any reason, they instantly have your entire social circle mapped out.
Worse, the act of seeking out encrypted communication is itself a red flag. It’s a perfect filter: “Show me everyone paranoid enough to use crypto.” You’re basically raising your hand.
So, in a twisted way, Signal being a tool for private conversations, makes it a perfect machine for mapping associations and identifying targets. The fact that Signal is operated centrally with the server located in the US, and it’s being developed by people with connections to US intelligence while being constantly pushed as the best solution for private communication should give everyone a pause.
The kicker is that thanks to gag orders, companies are legally forbidden from telling you if the feds come knocking for this data. So even if Signal’s intentions are pure, we’d never know how the data it collects is being used. The potential for abuse is baked right into the phone-number requirement.
The link is not working. Would you be so kind as to provide the article link?
oh here https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/15/faq-data-subpoena-investigation/
Opinion: I think painting in Signal in such negative light is more harmful in the practical sense. Having fragmented messaging towards the public rhat does not care about many of these aspects just makes a lot more hesitant to change, from my perspective.
We as a community should, in my opinion, pick a “good enough” solution for the majority of the people we interact with. That in itself is a market force to show interest and demand for private solutions. Most people I know don’t have the tools or knowledge or time to understand nuances and all they’ll hear are conflicting messages.
For us more technically inclined people: hell yeah, let’s figure out the ideal model and bring it up to maturity so others can join when it’s fleshed out. E.g. when lemmy came to my attention in the reddit 3rd party app fiasco, I was really confused on how to sign up and use it. And I’m no stranger to tech.
There are plenty of good enough options like SimpleX Chat out there that don’t have this problem. The whole argument that people should just ignore the obvious issue with Signal is frankly weird.
There’s no such social graph to speak of. Signal does not know who is speaking to whom.
Three-letter agencies have served them legal subpoenas many many times and they never turn over anything more than the above information.
Filter for…what, exactly? The hundreds of millions of people who value private and secure communications?
We do, because they publish them publicly.
The only people who know this are people operating the server. Period.
See the link I provided above.
Yup, that’s precisely what it’s a filter for.
Trust me bro is not a viable model for anybody who actually gives a shit about their privacy.
The reality of the situation is that Signal asks users for information it has no business collecting during the sign up process, and this information can be used in adversarial ways against the users. People using Signal are making a faith based judgment to trust the operators of this server.
You have no source for that other than Signal’s “just trust us” claims.
Apparently they don’t store contact info.
https://signal.org/blog/looking-back-as-the-world-moves-forward/
The problem is that you just have to trust them because only people who actually operate the server know what they do or do not store. Trust me bro, is not a viable security model. As a rule, you have to assume that any info an app collects, such as your phone number, can now be used in adversarial fashion against you.
And that is the problem with anything you don’t write yourself. And for anything you do write yourself: Are you smarter than the three-letter agencies?
There are plenty of chat services that aren’t centralized and hosted in the USA.
Sure… and my point is that you have to trust those services that aren’t hosted in the USA. It’s a choice you have to make. I’m not judging either way, just pointing out because what I responded to in the comment to which I replied was:
Which is true of open source unless you read the code and can verify nothing nefarious exists; which is true if you use a service in a country you trust; which is true no matter what you’re doing.
Not all entities are deserving of the same level of trust - some are more trustworthy than others - but you are still making a decision to trust someone unless you write the code yourself or verify the code yourself.[1]
And had the capability and time to do so ↩︎
You don’t have to trust anybody when you run your own server, or you use a server that doesn’t collect information it has no business collecting.
You have to trust the people that wrote the code.
Again, you’re trusting the authors of the code.
Which is fine, but it’s a choice to trust them.
And the client, too.
There’s a big difference between having confidence in open source code that has been audited by many people, and knowing for a fact that the service collects specific information. In the former case, you can never be absolutely sure that the code is not malicious so there is always a risk, but in the latter case you know for a fact that the service is collecting inappropriate information and you have to trust that people operating the service are not using it in adversarial ways. These two scenarios are in no way equivalent.
It’s a choice to trust the entire open source community around the project and all the security researchers who have been looking at the code.
Frankly, I have trouble believing that you don’t understand the difference here and are making your argument in good faith.
No need for that when self hosted open source projects exist
But again, you either read the source to confirm there’s nothing nefarious, or… you trust the programmers.
Which is not a problem, but it is a choice to trust. All I’m pointing out. :)
Well yeah everything is a choice when trust is the matter, but there is a difference between choosing a community project that can be audited by different transparent parties and choosing a private company on their own servers (even on source available projects)
Best alternative?
It really depends on your needs and what people you communicate with are willing to use. A few platforms that are notable in no particular order.
SimpleX Chat is probably the gold standard right now. It uses absolutely no user IDs such as phone numbers, no usernames, no random strings of text. Instead, it creates unique, pairwise decentralized message queues for every single contact you have. Because there is no global identity, there is no metadata connecting your conversations together.
Session is a popular Signal alternative. It doesn’t require a phone number and routes your messages through an onion-routed decentralized network that’s similar to Tor. Since your IP address is hidden and messages are bounced through multiple nodes, no single server ever knows who is talking to whom, stripping away metadata.
Jami is completely decentralized, open-source platform. It uses Distributed Hash Tables to connect users directly to one another without a central server. Notably, it supports high-quality voice and video calls.
I really want simplexchat to evolve and get more features. If they ever make a lot of mod tools and the possibility to make giant servers with thousands with chatrooms like discord I could see it having mass appeal due to the ease of “signup”
yeah it definitely has some promise
heard SimpleX is really good, the only thing that bothers me is their vc funding model. It makes me feel a bit suspicious.
Yeah, I’m leery about anything where vcs are involved as well for obvious reasons. The tech itself does seem solid though, and it is open source. If it does start moving in a sketchy direction at least it could be forked at that point.
I like your analysis, and would love your thoughts on matrix(assuming you have ofc)
It’s better than Signal since you don’t have to disclose any personal info, but people have pointed out some issues with federation in it. Again, it’s one of those things that may or may not matter based on your use case.
That link seems dated (Nov. 2024). If anyone finds a more current critique, pls send. I also get auto-kicked from HLC simplex group, so I’m not sure what to think of them but commando’s matrix server was amazing befored abandoned