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Re:Telegram told to give encryption keys to Russian authorities by morsch on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @05:39PM (#16632958)
WhatsApp requires your phone (and it must be a phone) to be on and connected to WiFi, using battery, to use their desktop "app". This is terrible usability.

I can understand it'd be very annoying when you're affected -- eg having to work in an area with ethernet, but without wifi/3G, or when you need a fallback when the phone is out of battery. For the most part, it's a non-issue for me.

Signal uses the same basic protocol and doesn't require the phone to be online all the time.

Chances are the WhatsApp implementation chose a trade off that minimized confusion for less sophisticated users (within the constraints of maintaining confidentiality). That tends to be a good idea when you've got a billion users.

If I sign in to a new device on Telegram ..., I can instantly have my entire message history available

Including "secret chats"?

Re:Telegram told to give encryption keys to Russian authorities by jakebasile on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @05:57PM (#16633104)
> That tends to be a good idea when you've got a billion users.

Telegram has a lot of users as well. It's a design choice for sure, but I disagree with it and it doesn't work for me personally. Their lack of support for anything but phones is my primary concern though - I could maybe stomach the requirement for my primary device to be online, but simply not making at least an iPad and preferably a macOS app is a no go for me.

> Including "secret chats"?

No, Telegram secret chats are device to device and can't be backed up or transferred. This is also why I rarely used them.

Re:Telegram told to give encryption keys to Russian authorities by literallycancer on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @06:52PM (#16633540)
Ah, so Telegram history sync works so well that not only you have your history instantly available, but everyone else does as well :)
Re:Telegram told to give encryption keys to Russian authorities by jakebasile on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @06:58PM (#16633584)
This possibility is not lost on me, and I have made an informed decision to accept that.