Needless to say, our users lost trust and we couldn't risk this happening again.

We still run the service(from request of a few existing users) but not actively promoting it.

[1] https://t.me/megadealsbot

https://telegram.org/faq#q-there-39s-illegal-content-on-tele...

Yes, but they take steps to ensure they cannot easily be forced to decrypt chats via a court order in a single country. From the Telegram FAQ:

To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept in the same place as the data they protect. As a result, several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data.

https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests

> Furthermore, they frequently "ban" channels that they deem contain "inappropriate" or "adult" content. Clearly they're reviewed by either humans or AI of some sort. So... that makes me uncomfortable.

AFAIK messages are only forwarded to Telegram support if they are reported by users. Chats spreading pornographic content are often banned on iOS due to the App Store guidelines (and in certain countries due to local laws), but illegal channels (e.g. CP) may be blocked globally.

> Also, this means that anyone who has your phone number is told you're on the app and given your username, which you may not want for privacy reasons.

This is not true anymore, a while ago they added new privacy settings that allow you to prevent others from finding you unless they are in your Telegram contact list. (Of course, this means if you don't want anyone in your phone's contacts to be able to find you on Telegram, you should deny the app contacts permission.)

How can we as users be certain that they wouldn't decrypt our chats anyway, contrary to their stated policy?

As long as they have the technical capacity to decrypt my chats, I wouldn't feel secure on their platform, no matter what they say.

Again, this is just what they claim. Doesn't mean they don't read chats because they feel like it. And this doesn't mean that they won't cooperate with other entities in the future. Or that the keys won't get leaked.

Your data being encrypted is pointless if it's stored one someone else's servers, and they have the keys to it.

I see no reason why open source helps here. Closed source clients aren't black boxes. You can examine the bytecode. You can decompile the binaries.

I see no reason why a conspiracy dedicated enough to hide a backdoor as a buffer overrun wouldn't also be capable of making the Telegram server store key material in a single country to make it available to legal requests (since, as you say. the back-end software isn't open source).

Open source doesn't make things automatically secure, but one can't argue that it isn't much easier to inspect.

Bytecode is basically the same as source. Decompiled binaries are harder to read, but there are oodles of professionals who are very skilled at reading decompiled code. The actual structure of the program itself plays (to me) a much bigger role in the auditability of a system.

Signal is the gold standard for confidentiality, but forcing folks to disclose a phone number as a primary identifier has privacy issues.

But for me Telegram and Signal are equally insecure because they don't allow anonymous accounts without a phone number. Using phone number for authentication is insecure because it is very easy to intercept SMS messages, especially if you are a telecom or the government. You better avoid using such messengers and not support them unless you want to provide your ID in future for registration on any website.

The other thing is that Telegram is just far more feature rich. It feels like what you’d like expect from a modern messaging app.

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about this all, though, is that third party devs can’t make their own Signal clients to try to improve the situation. If you want to use Signal, you have to take it with all of its warts, and that’s a hard sell.

Linking phone or use it for 2FA should be like red light today. For Telegram, banking app, don't matter.

Also interesting is to see that it has been adopted by the French government: https://lwn.net/Articles/779331/

Edit: also, telegram doesn't support e2e encrypted group chats, unlike riot.

Telegram: we do E2E!* That makes us MORE SECURE than other messengers!

Matrix: you can enable E2E if you want.

* just not by default†

† unless you count "E2E" security between your client and our servers,‡ which we'll confusingly highlight in our security documentation as if it were special††

‡ you don't really need E2E anyway because we store your data in shell companies across the world

†† I guess it is "special" because Telegram invented its own crypto algorithms?

I'd like Telegram a lot more if they would stop with their bullshit claims, because it's actually a good service for some usecases. While reading the article I was hoping it was just written by a clueless Telegram fanboy, but reality is disappointing…

But in terms of getting less technical people on board (frankly, often the sort to go to WA anyhow), I deeply suggest Signal.

They have a web version anyway and with Electron for desktop and webview for mobile, they can concentrate on the responsive single design instead of hiring different talents to communicate with each others left and right to slow down their development with inconsistencies.

TBH I don't know how other secure messaging programs like Signal or Wire handle the multi-device history issue.

I guess they could enable E2E encryption in private messages but being able to sync conversation across different telegram clients you are logged into is one of the features. Enabling E2E encryption by default will probably break this. I guess they could try and implement it like Signal has done for Private messages but I don't know why they have not done that already.

All of the other products have some other priorities, and so if security gets in the way, too bad security loses. Even WhatsApp, which uses the Signal protocol, has other priorities so the actual client software isn't focused on security, they were just happy to get a secure protocol out of the box.

The interesting thing is that years of research hasn't found many things that are just plain impossible securely, there are just a lot of unknowns or places where the secure option is harder. For example when you add a popcorn GIF to a chat Signal proxies this twice, masking your request from the GIF provider (Somebody used a popcorn GIF but the GIF provider doesn't learn who) and also from Signal's own servers (ishanjain28 used a GIF but Signal doesn't learn which one). Most outfits wouldn't bother, who cares about security anyway? But the feature now just works, without unnecessarily giving away information to people you might not trust.

That is completely ridiculous and if that is the reason Telegram is policing adult content then Telegram is ran by idiots. You can use any IM app to share adult content, there are plenty of groups on Whatsapp sharing porn, there are plenty of groups in iMessage sharing porn, there are porn accounts on Instagram and twitter, hell the entire reason snapchat even exists is so that you can send self destructing nudes to people.

The idea that an app will be banned due to content shared with people using the app, and not uploaded and/or hosted on some public website accessible to anyone (CP on tumblr) sounds completely ridiculous to me.

A thought: I hear that most of the complaints about “adult” TV channels crossing the line from “broadcastable” to “violating obscenity laws” are made by their competitors. Perhaps a similar thing happens here? That at least one of Telegram’s competitors constantly look for reasons to get them blocked from the App Store?

And it would be mostly due to public perception. Telegram is "used by terrorists because secret encryption" and already seen as suspicious.

Yes they will, if they're on channels (which are considered public).

Not only are Whatsapp groups and Snapchat chats are considered private, those companies have much more clout (and lawyers) than Telegram. Facebook threatening to remove Instagram/Facebook/Whatsapp from iOS would hurt Apple more than Facebook.

Side note: Even lists with no adult content, but referring to adult activities get banned. The creator of an app listing Burning Man events had to remove all references to adult workshops or get the banhammer. Apple's walled garden, Apple's rules (sigh).

- Instagram is stock full of sexual content

- A ton of cam models have private snapchat accounts where they share porn of themselves

- Reddit is basically a cornucopia of porn

- I can subscribe to a porn email list

- Share nudes to a group of friends on Facebook or even SMS

- I can join a hundred Discord channel to satisfy every single weird ass fetish I have,

- I can outright buy porn from Amazon and have it home delivered in 30 minutes.

And that's just from the top of my head. I'm sure you can find a metric ton of other apps that provide their users with easy access to sexual content. None of those apps will be banned for it since that is not the primary purpose of any of these apps. It's simply something that you're able to do with the tools provided. This is like banning all knives just because someone got stabbed.

If your plan is to ban apps that provide access to pornographic content, then you're gonna have to do a lot of banning.

Tumblr itself wasn't banned for porn, it was banned for child porn https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104366/tumblr-ios-app-...

I would also argue that a public blogsite where tagging and discovering new content is one of the key selling points of the platform, is very different from a Telegram channel where you need to specifically know the channel name to even join. As long as Telegram puts forth their best effort to eliminate illegal content from channels, they should be fine.

You are trying to find a reasoning in Apple's decisions, but isn't it easier to assume that not all apps are equally welcome in a private app store?

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/31/17412396/telegram-apple-a...

Telegram folks are just afraid that obscenity laws will be used against them by officially-not-censoring-but-actually-pretty-curious-about-everyone's-communications governments, like UK, France, Italy, and so on. "Oh, you cannot police your underage nudes? Law says we have to do it then, hand over the keys or shut it all down. We will absolutely not use these keys for anything else, honestly, uh-uh..."

That's the charitable reading that doesn't insult anyone's intelligence. I still don't particularly trust Telegram not to cooperate with authorities anyway - any centralized model is doomed to, at some point.

My understanding was that it isn't Telegram that bans them, but Apple that doesn't let certain channels be shown in the iOS app. Android and the web version show all channels.

As to the rest of the app's quality, no idea. I use it on my phone and it seems OK, but I've not really dug into it.

If not, it's fine.

If you do, why are you using these sorts of technologies in the first place?

You can disable that behavior in your privacy settings iirc

Really? I just went there recently, and nearly everyone used Telegram as their primary messaging application (other than Instagram)

I still never ended up using it, have too many messaging apps as it is. It's really sad how much that can limit staying in touch with international friends though.

If you are uncomfortable about content being read by humans -- (they claim) that only happens for public channels (open for anyone to read/search)

[1] https://briarproject.org/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17695266

Or to sum up:

"Briar is a messaging app designed for activists, journalists, and anyone else who needs a safe, easy and robust way to communicate. Unlike traditional messaging tools such as email, Twitter or Telegram, Briar doesn't rely on a central server - messages are synchronized directly between the users' devices. If the Internet's down, Briar can sync via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, keeping the information flowing in a crisis. If the Internet's up, Briar can sync via the Tor network, protecting users and their relationships from surveillance."

[1] https://briarproject.org/how-it-works/

[2] https://briarproject.org/raw/BRP-01-report.pdf

https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/issues/445