Neither really. Telegram is closed source on the servers and is known to cooperate with governments and law enforcement. Signal is the better option but I refuse to use an app that requires my phone number when alternatives like Matrix; XMPP; and Session exist. My phone number is tied to my name; address; and payment methods. It’s not a small ask of Signal in my opinion.
IMO Signal is about having private communications, not anonymity. Sure, apps like SimpleX Chat and Session are great, but they are useless without someone to chat with. Signal is, for the average user, the perfect balance of privacy and convenience. Your chances of getting people to switch to Signal are higher than to others because of its simplicity.
Signal. Also, the solution to the “no-one on signal” problem is simply to refuse to use insecure platforms like WhatsApp. If people want to talk to you then, they have to download signal. They might get annoyed with you, but sometimes a bit of coercion is necessary to get people to do what’s good for them.
@Albin9326 Out of those, I guess Signal. Telegram has however a larger userbase and more features afaik. However, I am on Telegram and I don’t think I will make the switch to Signal, rather I’ll go full time on XMPP with OMEMO and PGP. OMEMO is made after the Signal protocol, and PGP is so versatile. I wish I could use it for everything, sadly, none of my friends use it and I am having a hard time explaining how it works to others.
me: a telegram premium user reading comments 👀
guys the fact is that signal is fucking empty, there’s nothing. lacking of a lot of features and one thing that is the worst (for me) is that signal isn’t social and (as I saw when i used it) there aren’t any public group or channels. I use Telegram for everything, as music player, as private chatting and as social app but sane and without an algorithm that tracks me, and knowing that there isn’t CIA behind me watching me enjoying memes is enough. I also saw someone posting an article about Telegram not having e2e encryption, the reason for that (as I known) is the sync from all devices being difficult to have with e2e and the contents of the messages are very heavy (looking at animated emojis, reactions, stickers ecc). Of course I’d prefer to have a more secure app like Signal that has e2e and has been suggested by EU itself, but if I have to think all the thing I’m loosing to just have 1 feature, that doesn’t that much to me (telegram has never given any info to policy as i know and a lot of illegal things happens on telegram proving that maybe their privacy is better than you think), I prefer to have a lot of more features.
If you want to correct me I’ll enjoy reading more on the platform I like.
for the first i didn’t really understand the circumstances (the sites requires subscribtion to read the article) for the second i guess it’s normal that if you do something anti ethical you don’t deserve the privacy the app offered to you. like dark web is nice for not getting censured but pedosites needs to be shutted down and people behind them punished
@progettarsi Then they shouldn’t publicize their app as a private messaging app, since they have access to our supposedly private conversations. That is actively harming their users because they’re giving them a false sense of security. I have some IRL friends who think Telegram is more private than WhatsApp (which is obviously wrong because WhatsApp at least uses E2EE **by default**) due to this false publicity.
i’m that friend. telegram isn’t selling my data and isn’t spying on my chat while I’m writing which makes e2e useless. also telegram isn’t owned by a multimillionaire corporation that is famous for selling any data of its users. And honestly I’m feeling better chatting on an app that admits that doesn’t have e2e, that WhatsApp selling itself as e2e but spying on its users constantly My personal rank in security is: 1. Signal, the best in security but lacking of features; 2. Telegram, good security and a lot of features, in contact with the community; 3. WhatsApp, lacking of features, owned by Meta, spying on users
I would trust a Matrix client like Element / Schildichat over Signal and Telegram. But if we are only considering the latter, I would pick signal (like many other comments have mentioned).
Trust doesn’t matter if no one uses these platforms to message you.
I persuaded my friends into trying other messaging platforms but they ended up flocking back to Whatsapp because their contacts are not on Signal and definitely not on Matrix. Also normies may find Element/Matrix difficult to use. Almost all of them have Telegram accounts and believes it’s more private than Whatsapp, also apparently they use it as a content downloading app than a messaging app.
At my time of adoption, Telegram had a better feature set and I wasn’t honestly super focused on the privacy minutia. Knowing what I know now…I guess Signal, but honestly I’d probably go even more niche if I was after something truly private. Like P2P messengers or something like that. I don’t really treat any messaging platform as fully private. If I really need something guaranteed to be private and I don’t want to try to convince a friend to install a new, even more obscure app, I’d probably just encrypt text files and generate keys for each other and send them via something, maybe email idk.
I wish people would use Signal, but Telegram is the closest thing to a sane privacy policy I’ve got. There are a few that luckily agreed to use Signal.
Waiting on interoperability, see how that’s implemented in Signal+WhatsApp (hopefully with Telegram to so I can ditch that).
As long as Signal requires my phone number, it’s a hard NO for me. I don’t care how good they encrypt if the first thing they do is require one of my most personal identifiers.
You’ll be able to connect with people by giving out your username instead of your phone number.
You will however still be required to register using your phone number, if I’m not completely mistaken.
So you can buy a burner phone (number) to receive the registration code and you’re good. Perhaps need to keep the number for migrating to new phone though.
IMO I’d rather have that and have them clearly say they’re not using it for anything than potentially be profiled on WhatsApp where my friends keyboards are spying on their end in terms of content, i.e. be plugged into a social network with half the conversation exposed that way.
do you change keyboards for different apps? The keyboard itself is a separate app. Switching whatsapp for telegram (of all things) means you switched the messaging app. You did not switch the keyboard app too.
So if you think your keyboard is spying on you, that has absolutely nothing to do with messaging apps. At all
I see the confusion, what I meant to say their keyboard is spying on them which includes their part of my conversation with them.
Having an app broadcast the metadata of the conversations (whatsapp) + a keyboard spying on them = me getting profiled, somewhat.
Although Meta tries to go Apple’s way and not share data (likewise for Google, iirc)
I’m also using telegram but I don’t trust it. It’s made by two Russian brothers who are fleeing from every country in the world. A bit to sketchy in my opinion.
Don’t trust them either but that’s sometimes a good sign. It’s been used for illegal activities using a 3rd party client for a while in one country that I know of, which oddly enough makes me a little more comfortable. Or at least that country just couldn’t get access to the data
Session and Threema seem to be coming along too, but I’m quite happy with Signal as my go to messaging service for now.
I like the work they do, and the head of the Signal Foundation, Meredith Whitaker, seems very level headed and passionate about their mission.
My only concern with Signal is how they will be able to keep the lights on long term. Either they will continuously need bailouts from billionaire benefactors, or they’ll have to monetize the shit out of their branding, with merch, a Patreon, probably some kind of ads and pushing even more for donations and fundraising. I hope I’m wrong but I have a feeling I’m not.
I love Signal, but at the end of the day they still operate a centralized service with all the drawbacks that entails. It only takes a change of leadership to kick of progressive enshitification, just look at what happened to WhatsApp. Being run by a non-profit should help, but the chance always exists with centralized control. Also their multi-device support is still not great, no official support for Android tablets for example. And idk why not, because Molly (Signal fork) recently added that without too much difficulty afaik.
Session looks really interesting imo, kinda like a decentralized and multi-device version of Signal.
It’s a not for profit, so they don’t need to rake in dough, just need to keep functioning, which isn’t a ton of cash for a messaging service. Wikipedia does just fine with donations, and they serve far more people.
I donate every month, and I bet there’s enough that do to keep running like they are.
Last time I used adguard, they seemed to want to get money from user donations. By having more users, more users would donate, and there would be a point where there would be enough.
Tho I’m not sure if they have reached such point or if they would reach it in the future.
Telegram is, by all accounts, a privacy garbage fire. They rolled their own crypto, bless them, and as they say, anyone can design a cryptosystem that they themselves can’t break.
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SimpleX is the best
Neither really. Telegram is closed source on the servers and is known to cooperate with governments and law enforcement. Signal is the better option but I refuse to use an app that requires my phone number when alternatives like Matrix; XMPP; and Session exist. My phone number is tied to my name; address; and payment methods. It’s not a small ask of Signal in my opinion.
IMO Signal is about having private communications, not anonymity. Sure, apps like SimpleX Chat and Session are great, but they are useless without someone to chat with. Signal is, for the average user, the perfect balance of privacy and convenience. Your chances of getting people to switch to Signal are higher than to others because of its simplicity.
Completely agree with you. I think a lot of people confuse privacy vs anonymity.
Signal. Also, the solution to the “no-one on signal” problem is simply to refuse to use insecure platforms like WhatsApp. If people want to talk to you then, they have to download signal. They might get annoyed with you, but sometimes a bit of coercion is necessary to get people to do what’s good for them.
Signal, but no one I know uses it, no local groups are on it. It doesn’t really have many features.
Meanwhile telegram has tons of people in local groups for all kinds of stuff.
@Albin9326 Out of those, I guess Signal. Telegram has however a larger userbase and more features afaik. However, I am on Telegram and I don’t think I will make the switch to Signal, rather I’ll go full time on XMPP with OMEMO and PGP. OMEMO is made after the Signal protocol, and PGP is so versatile. I wish I could use it for everything, sadly, none of my friends use it and I am having a hard time explaining how it works to others.
me: a telegram premium user reading comments 👀 guys the fact is that signal is fucking empty, there’s nothing. lacking of a lot of features and one thing that is the worst (for me) is that signal isn’t social and (as I saw when i used it) there aren’t any public group or channels. I use Telegram for everything, as music player, as private chatting and as social app but sane and without an algorithm that tracks me, and knowing that there isn’t CIA behind me watching me enjoying memes is enough. I also saw someone posting an article about Telegram not having e2e encryption, the reason for that (as I known) is the sync from all devices being difficult to have with e2e and the contents of the messages are very heavy (looking at animated emojis, reactions, stickers ecc). Of course I’d prefer to have a more secure app like Signal that has e2e and has been suggested by EU itself, but if I have to think all the thing I’m loosing to just have 1 feature, that doesn’t that much to me (telegram has never given any info to policy as i know and a lot of illegal things happens on telegram proving that maybe their privacy is better than you think), I prefer to have a lot of more features. If you want to correct me I’ll enjoy reading more on the platform I like.
@progettarsi @Albin9326 Telegram did actually share user info with authorities:
https://www.livelaw.in/news-updates/after-court-order-telegram-discloses-phone-numbers-ip-addresses-of-users-accused-of-sharing-infringing-material-215311
https://www.androidcentral.com/apps-software/telegram-reportedly-gives-user-data-to-german-authorities
Yet they still claim that they “have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments”.
for the first i didn’t really understand the circumstances (the sites requires subscribtion to read the article) for the second i guess it’s normal that if you do something anti ethical you don’t deserve the privacy the app offered to you. like dark web is nice for not getting censured but pedosites needs to be shutted down and people behind them punished
@progettarsi > the sites requires subscribtion to read the article
Here’s a link without a pay wall
https://web.archive.org/web/20230207144839/https://www.livelaw.in/news-updates/after-court-order-telegram-discloses-phone-numbers-ip-addresses-of-users-accused-of-sharing-infringing-material-215311
> it’s normal that if you do something anti ethical you don’t deserve the privacy the app offered to you
This contradicts what you said earlier : “a lot of illegal things happens on telegram proving that maybe their privacy is better than you think”
yeah a lot of illegal things happen on telegram = the app tries to cover you how it can, but if the law claims a thing there isn’t a lot to do
@progettarsi Then they shouldn’t publicize their app as a private messaging app, since they have access to our supposedly private conversations. That is actively harming their users because they’re giving them a false sense of security. I have some IRL friends who think Telegram is more private than WhatsApp (which is obviously wrong because WhatsApp at least uses E2EE **by default**) due to this false publicity.
i’m that friend. telegram isn’t selling my data and isn’t spying on my chat while I’m writing which makes e2e useless. also telegram isn’t owned by a multimillionaire corporation that is famous for selling any data of its users. And honestly I’m feeling better chatting on an app that admits that doesn’t have e2e, that WhatsApp selling itself as e2e but spying on its users constantly My personal rank in security is: 1. Signal, the best in security but lacking of features; 2. Telegram, good security and a lot of features, in contact with the community; 3. WhatsApp, lacking of features, owned by Meta, spying on users
I would trust a Matrix client like Element / Schildichat over Signal and Telegram. But if we are only considering the latter, I would pick signal (like many other comments have mentioned).
Trust doesn’t matter if no one uses these platforms to message you.
I persuaded my friends into trying other messaging platforms but they ended up flocking back to Whatsapp because their contacts are not on Signal and definitely not on Matrix. Also normies may find Element/Matrix difficult to use. Almost all of them have Telegram accounts and believes it’s more private than Whatsapp, also apparently they use it as a content downloading app than a messaging app.
Stop “trusting” your messaging platform and use matrix for fucks sake.
deleted by creator
Stop trusting your messaging platform and use this other messaging platform! Matrix can be less secure than Signal if used improperly
deleted by creator
None of them to be honest.
At my time of adoption, Telegram had a better feature set and I wasn’t honestly super focused on the privacy minutia. Knowing what I know now…I guess Signal, but honestly I’d probably go even more niche if I was after something truly private. Like P2P messengers or something like that. I don’t really treat any messaging platform as fully private. If I really need something guaranteed to be private and I don’t want to try to convince a friend to install a new, even more obscure app, I’d probably just encrypt text files and generate keys for each other and send them via something, maybe email idk.
Answer: Signal
I wish people would use Signal, but Telegram is the closest thing to a sane privacy policy I’ve got. There are a few that luckily agreed to use Signal.
Waiting on interoperability, see how that’s implemented in Signal+WhatsApp (hopefully with Telegram to so I can ditch that).
Maybe check out beeper? I’m not sure if it has Telegram integration but it works with WhatsApp and Signal as well as Matrix iMessage and others
https://www.beeper.com/privacy
Little worried about the second part but I like that’s it’s short
@Scolding7300 @iesou there’s even more to it.
https://www.rubdos.be/privacy/signal/2023/09/07/my-problem-with-beeper.html
‘‘being a passive member of a group with even a single Beeper user destroys group anonymity!’’
That’s a good read, thanks!
Will do, thanks!
As long as Signal requires my phone number, it’s a hard NO for me. I don’t care how good they encrypt if the first thing they do is require one of my most personal identifiers.
Threema has a very good model in that regard.
I heard from their forums it’s something they’re working on, so hopefully this year
You’ll be able to connect with people by giving out your username instead of your phone number. You will however still be required to register using your phone number, if I’m not completely mistaken.
So you can buy a burner phone (number) to receive the registration code and you’re good. Perhaps need to keep the number for migrating to new phone though.
non e2e encrypted by default, is not a sane privacy policy
IMO I’d rather have that and have them clearly say they’re not using it for anything than potentially be profiled on WhatsApp where my friends keyboards are spying on their end in terms of content, i.e. be plugged into a social network with half the conversation exposed that way.
I say sane in comparison to that.
Granted these are my own concerns
they use the same keyboards in different apps…
Wdym? I was under the impression that the Google native/default keyboard on Android feeds some stuff to their ad-related dataset
do you change keyboards for different apps? The keyboard itself is a separate app. Switching whatsapp for telegram (of all things) means you switched the messaging app. You did not switch the keyboard app too.
So if you think your keyboard is spying on you, that has absolutely nothing to do with messaging apps. At all
I see the confusion, what I meant to say their keyboard is spying on them which includes their part of my conversation with them. Having an app broadcast the metadata of the conversations (whatsapp) + a keyboard spying on them = me getting profiled, somewhat.
Although Meta tries to go Apple’s way and not share data (likewise for Google, iirc)
I’m also using telegram but I don’t trust it. It’s made by two Russian brothers who are fleeing from every country in the world. A bit to sketchy in my opinion.
Don’t trust them either but that’s sometimes a good sign. It’s been used for illegal activities using a 3rd party client for a while in one country that I know of, which oddly enough makes me a little more comfortable. Or at least that country just couldn’t get access to the data
Is that a real question?
I’m a regular Telegram user, but it is definitely not as good as Signal in terms of privacy
Signal every time.
Session and Threema seem to be coming along too, but I’m quite happy with Signal as my go to messaging service for now.
I like the work they do, and the head of the Signal Foundation, Meredith Whitaker, seems very level headed and passionate about their mission.
My only concern with Signal is how they will be able to keep the lights on long term. Either they will continuously need bailouts from billionaire benefactors, or they’ll have to monetize the shit out of their branding, with merch, a Patreon, probably some kind of ads and pushing even more for donations and fundraising. I hope I’m wrong but I have a feeling I’m not.
I love Signal, but at the end of the day they still operate a centralized service with all the drawbacks that entails. It only takes a change of leadership to kick of progressive enshitification, just look at what happened to WhatsApp. Being run by a non-profit should help, but the chance always exists with centralized control. Also their multi-device support is still not great, no official support for Android tablets for example. And idk why not, because Molly (Signal fork) recently added that without too much difficulty afaik.
Session looks really interesting imo, kinda like a decentralized and multi-device version of Signal.
It’s a not for profit, so they don’t need to rake in dough, just need to keep functioning, which isn’t a ton of cash for a messaging service. Wikipedia does just fine with donations, and they serve far more people.
I donate every month, and I bet there’s enough that do to keep running like they are.
Last time I used adguard, they seemed to want to get money from user donations. By having more users, more users would donate, and there would be a point where there would be enough.
Tho I’m not sure if they have reached such point or if they would reach it in the future.
Telegram is, by all accounts, a privacy garbage fire. They rolled their own crypto, bless them, and as they say, anyone can design a cryptosystem that they themselves can’t break.