I don't see anything that hasn't been know for a while. Telegram is convenient but not secure or safe. At least not by default. Is it actually possible to make it as secure as something like Signal?
Use Signal if you care about security and safety. Threema is another alternative I hear people talk about although I have not used it personally.
I got my family off WhatsApp for our family chat last year and it has been great. Excellent video and voice call quality imho.
I have used Threema and I like it, but the barrier is that it is not a free app. I've only been able to get fellow nerds to install it.
I like the idea that it indicates the level of safety you have with another person quite clearly. The highest level is when you physically scan one another's QR codes when you meet in person so you know nobody is inserting themselves into your key exchange.
> I don't see anything that hasn't been know for a while.
But known by whom? It seems Telegram has a fame for being secure and trustable enough that the "underdogs" of society who think they have reason to ensure their safety are using it en masse. Spreading education about their misbeliefs might be not so wrong.
Nobody of the hundreds of people I share groups with on Telegram does it for security.
It is all for convenience.
Articles like these make it sound like Telegram is somehow uniquely messed up while it is in fact a lot more secure than email (which can be accessed by at least your provider and sender/recipients provider).
Also unlike WhatsApp which has been hyped relentlessly Telegram doesn't automatically upload your messages unencrypted to Google Cloud and/or iCloud (unless you manage to convince your contacts to turn of automatic backups).
> Nobody of the hundreds of people I share groups with on Telegram does it for security.
That's bubble fallacy. Just because your bubble is more educated about this doesn't make this a general truth about the whole world. Basically anyone you will find on this site has exceptional high knowledge about certain things, which the majority of people do not have.
But I also have strong doubts whether this crafty claim is even true. Quite unlikely that you know the state of knowledge of so many people for this specific topic.
> Articles like these make it sound like Telegram is somehow uniquely messed up while it is in fact a lot more secure than email (which can be accessed by at least your provider and sender/recipients provider).
Very manipuilative and misleading argument. The article does not recomment email or whatsapp as an alternative, but signal and threema. Actually the article is quite obvious in saying that Telegram is as unsafe as Whatsapp.aaaa
Known by everyone who really cares and understands what the differences are.
It's not as if normal people would be better off with e.g. Whatsapp - yeah it uses end2end, but I'm sure 99% of the users backup their chat in the cloud - and now they are not really better off but maybe even worse.
People usually don't understand the difference. From their perspective, everything probably has the same wizard like security level. And the ones who know and care use a non-mainstream messenger.
Anyone could have looked up Telegram on their favourite search engine and found all the information in this article anytime in the past year or two. It is nothing new.
But Telegram has pretty good word-of-mouth PR which is why it was so popular for things like the HK protests even though it clearly wasn't a good tool to use with regards to anonymity and safety.
I don't think, and did not say, the article is bad. Just that it is nothing new.
> Anyone could have looked up Telegram on their favourite search engine and found all the information in this article anytime in the past year or two. It is nothing new.
That's not really how knowledge spreads. Otherwise we wouldn't have so many problems with fakenews and conspiracy bullshit.
> I don't think, and did not say, the article is bad. Just that it is nothing new.
Why does it matter whether it's new or old? I don't know much about vice.com, but it does not make the impression of a bleeding edge news-source, but just regular journalism. And with regular journalism it's common to take up old topics to bring back awarness or illustrate whether things have changed in the meanwhile.
I mean even here on hackernews most heated discussions are also around year old articles and topics, not just the daily fresh meat.
Use Signal if you care about security and safety. Threema is another alternative I hear people talk about although I have not used it personally.
I got my family off WhatsApp for our family chat last year and it has been great. Excellent video and voice call quality imho.