Only if you have multiple phones. One account per number.
> Yeah my texts are probably being read by the FSB. So what? Better that than the NSA, frankly.
I can't tell if this is a joke. If it's not, it's fairly insulting to everyone who believes in a world with privacy and freedom.
I personally think the NSA has a jurisdiction to do more to American citizens in the USA. I would be extra careful about the NSA if I was H1B.
Let's say you say something less than pleasant about China, or you like Winnie the Pooh.
China has already demonstrated the will and influence necessary to extend pressure on other companies, governments, and etc to deal with such things.... and you have far less recourse (if any) to deal with (or know about) it than most anything.
I post this a lot but it's true:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
But let's also be clear that much like your data being held by a corporation, leaks, etc all happen... if Russia has it, so may someone closer to you.
But I think it is also unhelpful / inaccurate for every non free nation that comes up we get these sort of "What about this place!?!?" false equivalency arguments.
Leave a little nerve agent on your doorknobs.
Also the FSB would probably report on you to the US govt anyway, if you were actually up to something big enough that the NSA would have taken interest.
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And there it is, Russia's efforts at influencing my account or using it's messaging to influence others. Targeted attempts to get users to click rigged links. Psy-op mind fucking.
Do I really want to give this type of government more data to fuck with me or people in my orbit? Just because "better than NSA," whatever that means?
No I'll pass on that give me privacy from all the alphabet boys please.
Being funneled to the FSB doesn't prevent them from being read by the NSA, it's just one more opportunity for the NSA to intercept them.
The one thing that keeps me from using Telegram as my primary messenger is the low maximum line-width that makes it feel like you're on mobile even if you're using the desktop client. But UX, especially speed, is just amazing.
On macOS I use the semi-official Swift/Cocoa client instead of the main Qt-based one.
Other messaging apps wouldn't be so bad if alternative clients were a possibility, because inevitably someone would build better clients. Messaging app platforms should have open APIs and welcome third party client devs, not chase them away.
That, and it's not Facebook-owned, a company which has a very detailed track record of lying and abusing private information.
Telegram as a Messenger/WhatsApp replacement for the general public is solid gold, even if state security agencies were able to peek in it.
It all depends on your threat model for a given information exchange you're going to have and who you consider to be your adversary.
The company does not have servers in Russia, the software wasn't developed in Russia, etc.
The only reason one could make the connection is that it was developed by a Russian. A Russian that gave up a lot specifically not to cooperate with the Russian government.
But it was developed in Russia. Durov was lying to the world that developers were abroad out of reach of russian authorities, when in practice they were in Saint Petersburg just a floor below VK.com developers (a previous company by Durov, now controlled by russian government via proxy pocket oligarchs)
Care to explain?
He probably lives in the USA where the FSB is less likely to oppress him than US government agencies are.
On the other hand, it's the NSA's job to read all the FSB's data. So by using the non-US-based program, you make it easier for the US government to spy on you.
Every time these discussions come up people sound like they think they're El Chapo or Ai Weiwei in which case yes don't use telegram. If you're an average citizen these agencies couldn't care less what youtube videos you share
FSB would try to read that information to try to damage the countries, to spy, to steal databases, to hurt people and so on.
If FSB could read private messages of US citizens it would be 1000 times worse than Google or Facebook reading them even accounting for leaks and misuse in G and FB.
G and FB is thousands engineers who love unicorns and rainbows and are extremely offended when the see a person wearing MAGA hat. FSB is men who regularly drink vodka, who are trained kill, who are not allowed to leave Russia, who are constantly told that Russia is surrounded by enemies.
Don’t compare G and FB to FSB.
(I doubt FSB can read Telegram.)
And have a pet bear that plays balalayka.
Yet the VERY FIRST feature presented in Telegram's front page is privacy: "Telegram messages are heavily encrypted and can self-destruct."
Heavily encrypted is a complete lie, but people who want privacy don't know that, they will download Telegram thinking it's secure. You're wrong and you're doing harm by spreading claims like that.
>or his advocates) pops up and tells us it's trash and we should all use signal instead.
Yeah, everyone should fight the propaganda machine shilling a really, really dangerous product.
Every time someone recommends Telegram it's due to features, the marketing strategy is clearly "if we can get them hooked on features, they will forget about the fact every feature is designed to spy on them".
>The real reason to use telegram is that it's miles away the best messenging program out there.
Ooh you're one of them. See here's the thing: the features that aren't really private, aren't really features. Telegram is a collection of trojan horses: seemingly useful things that actually hurt you by spying on you. When you measure Telegram's E2EE features against that of Signal's you'll immediately see who has more features. Telegram doesn't even have group messages.
>It's as user friendly as whatsapp while having completely seamless desktop/mobile integration
It doesn't. There is absolutely no desktop mobile integration for anything that's E2EE. For Signal, everything is.
>Then you have all the gravy like cool tools for groupchat admin, channels, and bots of course
No there are no private group chats with any kind of management in Telegram.
>Yeah my texts are probably being read by the FSB. So what?
To me it sounds like you're a privileged person who doesn't have to care about these things. You're not doing anything that will ever rock the boat, so you're pretty much immune. The only real question is, what is your legacy?
Also why did you come here to tell us about your privilege and to list Telegram's dangerous features? Because you're a good Samaritan?
Do you use email despite it's lack of end-to-end encryption? I would bet that 99% of these privacy people still use email.
The question is, what is email being used for? Communicating with people who we don't have private interaction with? Having academic discussion on mailing lists? That stuff doesn't really require confidentiality.
Last time I looked, Gmail or equivalent products didn't allow you to easily end-to-end encrypt your messages without any additional effort.
All of that to say, I guarantee the majority of Telegram users aren't utilizing E2E-encryption so the Gmail comparison is valid in that light.
Though my counterpoint would be that privacy advocates likely know how to use PGP and use it to securely communicate with fellow privacy advocates via email.
They failed to do this only because they have a real end-to-end encryption for all chats, unlike Telegram.
Telegram doesn't have E2E encryption for groups or Windows/Linux desktop clients, even if you try to toggle something. So your argument is false.
The real reason to use telegram is that it's miles away the best messenging program out there. It's as user friendly as whatsapp while having completely seamless desktop/mobile integration (something whatsapp and signal have failed to do), it only requires a phone number for the initial signup, and generally speaking it has all sorts of cool features and less bullshit than alternatives.
Then there are the little things - you can create multiple accounts and switch seamlessly, you can delete whatever message from whomever for everyone without leaving a trace (if it bothers you just switch to secret chats), all links are listed in each convo, you have pretty much unlimited and unrestricted cloud storage, etc.
Then you have all the gravy like cool tools for groupchat admin, channels, and bots of course. You can order a taxi or search up a book on scihub (bypassing countrywide blocking) with telegram. You can even do bizarre stuff like discover people around you or verify your identity on a service with telegram.
Yeah my texts are probably being read by the FSB. So what? Better that than the NSA, frankly. If I really want secrecy I'll use Tor or Signal.