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Is Telegram Safe? No.

Is Telegram Safe?I was waiting for one of those WIRED $5/year sales to come around to read their provocative article from earlier this year: “The Kremlin has Entered the Chat” (paywall).

The nut of it is that about a year ago, a dissident and vice-chair of a political party heard banging on her apartment door.  She mentioned this in a private group chat on Telegram.  “They’re unlikely to bust it down,” she wrote.  But later the FSB did break it down and when she arrived at the police station, she was shocked to hear the officer read off her messages, including “they’re unlikely to bust it down”.

As the activist later analyzed, there are two possible explanations.  The first is that she or one of her followers had their phone hacked, and the second is that that Telegram is complying with Moscow’s legal requests.

The article goes on to state:

Over the past year, numerous dissidents across Russia have found their Telegram acounts seemingly monitored or compromised. Hundreds have had their Telegram activity wielded against them in criminal cases. Perhaps most disturbingly, some activists have found their “secret chats”—Telegram’s purportedly ironclad, end-to-end encrypted feature—behaving strangely, in ways that suggest an unwelcome third party might be eavesdropping. These cases have set off a swirl of conspiracy theories, paranoia, and speculation among dissidents, whose trust in Telegram has plummeted. In many cases, it’s impossible to tell what’s really happening to people’s accounts—whether spyware or Kremlin informants have been used to break in, through no particular fault of the company; whether Telegram really is cooperating with Moscow; or whether it’s such an inherently unsafe platform that the latter is merely what appears to be going on.

The channels for safe, end-to-end-encrypted, anonymous communication are rather limited these days.  For texting and email of course, and also proprietary messaging like Facebook Messenger.  WhatsApp’s trust plunged when they were busted for sharing data with Facebook, so we’re down to Telegram and Signal.  Unlike Signal, Telegram does not set chants to E2E encryption by default.

Telegram was blocked in Russia for some time until a surprise reversal in 2020.  Telegram had previously agreed to turn over phone numbers and IP addresses, but said it had no way to hand over encryption keys, which are generated and stored on user’s phones.  The 2020 freeing of Telegram was due to Telegram “stated readiness to counter terrorism and extremism”.

You can read that two ways:

  1. Under pressure from its citizens, Russia decided phone numbers and IP addresses were enough to “counter terrorism”
  2. The FSB has some leverage on Telegram

To bolster the latter, consider Telegram’s finances.  There’s a lot of server and network costs, and Telegram tried an ICO but it went down in flames in 2020.  Not long after, relations with the Kremlin thawed.  Hmm.

The activist mentioned above has since moved to Signal.

raindog308

8 Comments

  1. Dont use Telegram
    – It “Requires” SMS/Mobile Number to make an account
    – It uses one centralized server
    – You cant self host the server
    – Server is closed source
    – Client is closed source
    – The CEO is on the board of WEF – Tax cattle will own nothing and be happy
    – Its Russian
    – Telegram is not secure by default only secret chats are encrypted
    – Telegram has censored people and unfairly kicked them off
    – Telegram has worked with Google Play store to shadow list people

    Solution
    – Self Hosting
    – Open Source
    – De Centralisation
    – Linux//BSD

    Solution
    – XMPP and Delta Chat

    Delta Chat
    – No Meta Data
    – No Centralized Server
    – Self host a server
    – Client Available on PC (Windows+Mac+Linux) and Smart Phones
    – Encrypted by default
    – No SMS number ‘required’
    – No DRM
    – No Cloud
    – Opensource

    —-

    Look up –
    Five/Nine/11 Eyes + PRISM + Intel IME + Sustainable Development + Great Reset
    BlackRock + Vanguard + Agenda 21 2030 + Snowden leak + Twitter Files

    Look which group of people created the
    words to shut down, prevent and block open honest discussion
    and prevents people discovering truth and gate keeps ‘facts’ and ‘knowledge’

    PC has always been Political Censorship, never Political ‘correct/correctness’
    its always been pushing the ‘correct’ uni-party line towards 2030

    ________
    Regards
    Charliebrownau
    * Email – charliebrownau@protonmail.com

    February 26, 2023 @ 3:22 pm | Reply
  2. I think Telegram still doesn’t support encrypted group chats at all.

    February 26, 2023 @ 4:43 pm | Reply
    • Whether it’s Telegram, Whatsapp, imessage, I just figure there are prying eyes everywhere. No such thing as privacy on the Internet, IMHO.

      February 26, 2023 @ 7:12 pm | Reply
    • John:

      Telegram supports end-to-end encryption chats from the beginning. Those chats are not even stored on Telegram servers.

      April 9, 2023 @ 6:49 am | Reply
  3. Threema is supposed to be good. Also, there is Wire; It is open source and you can self host it.

    February 26, 2023 @ 5:33 pm | Reply
  4. I want imformation much more.

    February 26, 2023 @ 11:52 pm | Reply
    • John Dodds:

      Telegram, Whatsapp, iMessage, FB Messenger, Google Chats etc are ALL giving info to all the SIGINT agencies. SIGNAL does not, thats why the UK was asking or it to comply, or leave, so they chose to leave, they even show a letter from the FBI demanding notice, and show you their reply “we cant, as we do not store the information” – Telegram does! its law for their jurisdiction (they can say what the like) – SIgnal and Session are the most secure, Mullvad browser with Mullvad VPN too…

      April 13, 2023 @ 5:25 am | Reply
  5. Ivaneide Ferreira:

    I LOVE TELEGRAM

    March 1, 2023 @ 9:14 am | Reply

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