Use services that store as little data as possible.
If data is stored, it can be given away and I would assume that it will be given away.
Telegram disguises itself as encrypted chat app, when it is actually just a regular centralized plaintext messenger that has an encryption feature that nobody uses.
No. It doesn't. This sentiment is pretty much confined to HN and seems to stem from the whole Moxie non-sense from years ago.
Telegram is a so much more than a messenger. It competes with WeChat, not Signal. It has an incredible API, bots, payments, apps/games, and is host to Onlyfans / Discord-like social groups.
It's time to stop parroting this idea that Telegram is some kind of secure messenger. Yes, it has secret chats, but that is not Telegram's defining feature.
* Simple
* _Private_
* Synced
* Fast
* Powerful
* Open
* Secure
* Social
* Expressive
It is not by accident that people think that Telegram is focussed on privacy.
100%. the same reason i avoid whatsapp and signal like the plague. "mobile number" is in itself a big identifier when you are living in a place where you have o do mandatory KYC so that the government knows which each mobile number is linked to the actual human being.
i dont care signal doesnt hold any messages. the government can ask for my number and they can use the xkcd spanner method to do the rest. the point is to AVOID PII in the first place, matrix does this wonderfully. no need for mobile number or email number or your real name.
living in an actual police state, i can attest to how important that is, americans/europeans can hardly imagine.
Whose number? How are the government going to "ask for your number" ? Signal doesn't hold any data that would let them answer that query if they wanted to.
They can still beat you with a wrench to divulge your information even if it’s on Matrix or even pen and paper.
Only Signal leaves your message on their servers totally encrypted at-rest whose keys stays at your phone. No court order can ever hope to compel Signal what was said. The court will instead need one of the parties' phone for that, if it hasn't expire-deleted yet and doesn't have 9-alphanumeric characters or longer password length.
That cannot be said true of Telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat (that I've reversed engineered).
Americans and Europeans have the desire to learn this lesson the hard way. They lack the wisdom to learn from others and instead believe their governments are the noble governments that would never violate their rights for power.
That's a minor inconvenience compared to not being able to communicate with most people who use these mainstream networks.
I'm more worried about the lack of encryption and trustworthiness aspect of them than giving away a phone number.
Telecom companies have full records of who had what IP, for what duration and when as does your ISP. If a phone number will get you pinched (based on no decryptable data) then so will anything else.
Use Matrix clients (Element, Fluffy chat) or Session, Briar (no (video)calls), Delta (no (video)calls), Jami, not recommending Threema because they can tie you through payment and it's centralized
Here simple chart to see what to use and not use (use translate feature):
>Use Matrix clients (Element, Fluffy chat) or Session, Briar...
I might be misremembering though
Where does it do this?
Best description of Telegram that I've seen so far.
I do trust Signal to keep the phone numbers safe with their methodology for doing that, but probably wouldn't anyone else.
Don't use messengers that ask for your phone number. Period.
They can knowingly launder billions of dollars for drug dealers plus terrorists and not even face a day in jail, comments like this make me chuckle.
The only "CEO"s facing jail are the people with 100 employees who shouldn't even have the title in the first place.
This is partly why Govts are so persistent about data-localization norms while in the past companies got away by storing data in a more privacy-friendly country. Here too, Telegram tried to make the argument that the data is stored in Singapore, but the courts got their way.
One of the more recent E2EE private messaging apps with metadata shredding and no registration requirement for is https://xx.network/messenger
It's available for Android & iOS.
F-Droid users can build Android version from the source (https://git.xx.network/elixxir/) and load it themselves.
There's no registration and the app doesn't collect your phone number, device ID and similar crap. Is it mature and polished? No, it has its quirks and rough corners. But it won't let you down on security and encryption.
Then the sewer system would be a bucket brigade: You fill a bucket at home and bring it over to your neighbor, and they pass it on in a long stinky chain of wastewater until it gets to the treatment plant or the ocean.
There would be no such thing as faucets, pipes, or protected water sources. It would just be a cycle of spraying it all into the air and bucket-brigading back to the source.
And that's today's Internet.