• Max-P@lemmy.max-p.meEnglish
    75·
    1 month ago

    Telegram was built to protect activists and ordinary people from corrupt governments and corporations – we do not allow criminals to abuse our platform to evade justice.

    So who gets to pick what’s a lawful request and criminal activity? It’s criminal in some states to seek an abortion or help with an abortion, so would they hand out the IPs of those “criminals”? Because depending on who you ask some will tell you they’re basically murderers. And that’s just one example.

    Good privacy apps have nothing to hand out to any government, like Signal.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        1 month ago

        But then you can’t sell your customer’s data for profit. Even if you don’t now, you still have that option in the future.

        • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zipEnglish
          4·
          1 month ago

          Exactly. Which is the entire reason you should do it. Since you can’t sell your customers for profit, that means you have to profit off of your customers. And another business could start up and compete with you. Also, your customers will trust you more.

    • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      163·
      1 month ago

      The second I went to sign up and learned a phone number was absolutely required, I knew that their privacy was pure bullshit. That little declaration at the end here is an absolute slap to the face.

        • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          52·
          1 month ago

          It’s bad for privacy no matter how you sell it. Unless you have a good amount of disposable income to buy up burner numbers all the time, a phone number tends to be incredibly identifying. So if a government agency comes along saying “Hey, we know this account sent this message and you have to give us everything you have about this account,” for the average person, it doesn’t end up being that different than having given them your full id.

          • calamityjanitor@lemmy.worldEnglish
            6·
            1 month ago

            Another aspect is the social graph. It’s targeted for normies to easily switch to.

            Very few people want to install a communication app, open the compose screen for the first time, and be met by an empty list of who they can communicate with.

            https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/

            By using phone numbers, you can message your friends without needing to have them all register usernames and tell them to you. It also means Signal doesn’t need to keep a copy of your contact list on their servers, everyone has their local contact list.

            This means private messages for loads of people, their goal.

            Hey, we know this account sent this message and you have to give us everything you have about this account

            It’s a bit backwards, since your account is your phone number, the agency would be asking “give us everything you have from this number”. They’ve already IDed you at that point.

            • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              32·
              1 month ago

              Yep, at that point they’re just fishing for more which, hey, why wouldn’t they.

              It’s a give and take for sure, requiring a real phone number makes it harder for automated spam bots to use the service, but at the same time, it puts the weight of true privacy on the shoulders and wallets of the users, and in a lesser way, incentives the use of less than reputable services, should a user want to truly keep their activities private.

              And yeah, there’s an argument to be made for keeping crime at bay, but that also comes with risks itself. If there was some way to keep truly egregious use at bay while not risking a $10,000 fine on someone for downloading an episode of Ms. Marvel, I think that would be great.

            • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              33·
              1 month ago

              Says right there in the subpoena “You are required to provide all information tied to the following phone numbers.” This means that the phone number requirement has already created a leak of private information in this instance, Signal simply couldn’t add more to it.

              Additionally, that was posted in 2021. Since then, Signal has introduced usernames to “keep your phone number private.” Good for your average Joe Blow, but should another subpoena be submitted, now stating “You are required to provide all information tied to the following usernames,” this time they will have something to give, being the user’s phone number, which can then be used to tie any use of Signal they already have proof of back to the individual.

              Yeah, it’s great that they don’t log what you send, but that doesn’t help if they get proof in any other way. The fact is, because of the phone number requirement, anything you ever send on Signal can easily be tied back to you should it get out, and that subpoena alone is proof that it does.

                • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                  24·
                  1 month ago

                  Please, use some critical thinking here.

                  What information? The gov already had the phone number. They needed it to make the request.

                  Yes. That’s the leak. A phone number can bridge the gap between your messages and your identity.

                  Notice the lack of any usernames provided.

                  You literally changed what I said to fit your narrative. Should a government agency already have access to a message and username, and make a legally valid request for the phone number associated with that username, Signal will be required by law to provide it, as it’s already know and proven that they have access to it. The subpoena you provided shows that they already have the phone numbers, so it is moot to this point.

                  If they’re getting evidence outside of Signal, that’s outside the scope of this discussion.

                  No, it’s not, that was literally the point of the discussion to begin with, you are the one trying to change it.

                  …no. It can’t.

                  Do you not know how phone numbers work? Generally if you go through a reputable provider, you’re going to be required to give at least your name. Additionally, even if you don’t give them your address, your location can pretty easily be extrapolated from things like the area codes and areas in which the phone number has been used. A warrant/subpoena is all it would take, and since that phone number is already tied to any messages they may have, that ties them directly to your identity.

                  It’s proof that it doesn’t.

                  This one barely even warrants a response. You’re either being plain obtuse or are genuinely failing to think critically about this, so I’ll break it down for you. They wouldn’t be serving a warrant to or subpoenaing Signal if they didn’t know the accounts in question were involved in something, which at minimum strongly implies that they already have some evidence of these users’ use of the service. Additionally, the fact that they’re subpoenaing so many at once implies they were in some kind of group on Signal.

                  Let’s try a hypothetical. Let’s say we have downtrodden citizens A-F, who are using Signal to talk about Bad Government. Now, let’s say someone from BG joins their group undercover and records those messages. Well, now BG wants to punish those poor DCs. If the undercover bad guy already has their phone numbers, job done, they can go find them. If not, all BG has to do is make a legal request for those phone numbers as associated with the usernames, which they do have. That would leave Signal with the choice of complying and directly harming these individuals, or becoming effectively a criminal entity within this territory.

                  Now, as for you, you have deflected, misquoted, misrepresented, and employed willful ignorance in this debate, and I will broker no further time for bad actors. Goodbye.

        • 0x0English
          1·
          1 month ago

          Signal requires that as well. Their privacy is definitely not bullshit.

          These two sentences are contradictory.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      1 month ago

      So who gets to pick what’s a lawful request and criminal activity?

      Probably Telegram themselves. Durov was forced into exile by Putin.

          • Arkouda@lemmy.caEnglish
            92·
            1 month ago

            The country in which the perpetrator lives or the crime was committed. First time using the internet?

            In your opinion, all companies must disclose the personal information of customers whenever a Government says “This person broke the law”?

              • Arkouda@lemmy.caEnglish
                52·
                1 month ago

                None of this is my opinion, it’s just how the world works LOL

                Can you elaborate?

                Not necessarily, but kinda. The gov typically need some sort of warrant and they need approval from the country they’re requesting it from.

                Which Government?

                Pardon my ignorance as this is my first time using the internet, but I am pretty sure that every Government on the planet does not use a universal set of laws or procedures for enforcement.

  • mashbooq@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    1 month ago

    Telegram users have never had privacy. Group chats are completely in the open and private messages are only encrypted if both users turn it on for each conversation—and it’s off by default. I’ve never understood why anyone thinks Telegram is any better than posting anywhere else on the internet.

      • KillerTofu@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        1 month ago

        That’s what subpoenas are for, to request the ip address and other identifying information are for. The documentation of activity in the channel is the evidence shown to a judge that then gets the official legal request.

      • Rimu@piefed.social
        12·
        1 month ago

        Half of them use their real name. Also a lot of them are sharing links to content they’ve posted using their personal FB account or whatever. They don’t even try to have any opsec because they don’t think they’re doing anything wrong.

  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zipEnglish
    12·
    1 month ago

    On a privacy note in general, I got an email from Proton today saying that they were changing their terms of service and I actually care enough about the service that I went and read the new terms and privacy policies for the products that I use. I will admit to not understanding a lot of the legal ease, but the part I was most interested in was the data retention policies and data encryption. And that all seems to be pretty bulletproof from a tech angle.