this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025
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Greetings!

A friend of mine wants to be more secure and private in light of recent events in the USA.

They originally told me they were going to use telegram, in which I explained how Telegram is considered compromised, and Signal is far more secure to use.

But they want more detailed explanations then what I provided verbally. Please help me explain things better to them! โœจ

I am going to forward this thread to them, so they can see all your responses! And if you can, please cite!

Thank you! โœจ

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[โ€“] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 2 points 3 days ago

With Signal, the key to encrypt your messages are on your device, and is never sent to the company.

Signal, and anyone who hacks them, or governments that attack them, cannot read your messages. This has been proven in court.

With Telegram, the key to encrypt your messages are on their server.

Telegram, and anyone who hacks them, or governments that attack them, can read all of your messages. This has also been proven in court.

[โ€“] Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Telegrsm is not secure anymore. USA have all the keys of the encriptions of telegrsm.

[โ€“] doomsdayrs@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago (2 children)
[โ€“] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

I wouldn't say USA has all the encryption keys, but the fact that it is actually possible to have a backdoor is reason enough for me to not use it. Signal complies with all search warrants, giving all the data they have to law enforcement. They have never given any data to law enforcement, because they do not have access to it. Telegrams approach is to simply to spread the data to several servers in different countries, so if law enforcement wanted access they'd have to submit requests to each country (some of which wouldn't comply).

[โ€“] qpsLCV5@lemmy.ml 80 points 1 week ago (1 children)

In my view, by far the biggest reason to switch is that Telegram doesn't end-to-end encrypt chats by default.

Yes you can start encrypted chats specifically, but i'll bet 99% of chats on telegram aren't encrypted - meaning whoever has access to the telegram servers can read all the messages.

Signal claims to end-to-end encrypt all chats by default, and if you want to be 100% sure you can in theory read the source code and compile the app yourself. this means signal cannot read any of your messages, even if police asks them to or servers get seized. That's a massive advantage in privacy.

[โ€“] 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de 23 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Additionally, E2E chats don't sync between devices (and iirc you can't use them on desktop at all), and group chats can't be encrypted at all.

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[โ€“] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 32 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Telegram doesn't even encrypt group chats. And it doesn't encrypt private convos by default.

[โ€“] logging_strict@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Then talk about coding. Non-techies curl up into a ball and die slightly inside as they run for the exits.

Highest form of encryption possible.

Try it

And if that is not enough to kill someones spirit and make them beg for mercy, recite random sections of the GNU Make documentation out of context and watch them go into convolutions.

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[โ€“] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 28 points 1 week ago (9 children)

While there may be better options out there, from a purely security standpoint.

The real world, with non-tech people needs solutions that are easy, fast and as close to foolproof as possible.

I choose Signal, because my mum, my sisters and brothers (none of which are tech people) can all go to their app stores and install Signal, it works and it is easy. Signal is private BY DEFAULT, I don't have to remind them to turn on security for each chat, there is voice and video chat for individuals and groups, I can use it to send files. It is really good. Secure communication is their primary goal.

I have been using Signal since it was called TextSecure and I only had one contact using it.

Yes it sucked when they dropped SMS support; but these days about 98% of my messaging goes through Signal. Any SMS is usually from my doctor/dentist/bank.

I never really trusted Telegram, too many compromises. Secure communication is not their primary goal.

[โ€“] logging_strict@lemmy.ml -1 points 6 days ago

The real world, with non-tech people needs solutions that are easy, fast and as close to foolproof as possible.

Nope. Grandma gets a smartphone

Meaning they are hopeless and it's impossible for them to emulate a techie.

It's a fools errand.

Just stop trying to pretend Grandma is something more than completely unimportant and forgettable and hopeless and more likely than not merely a pest.

I'm so tired of entertaining Grandmas.

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