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.
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.
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.
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.
In the US, agents must petition a judge for a search warrant. If granted, the agent may then compel an IT company to produce. If they are able, they must comply. It isn’t up to the CEO to decide what he feels is right.
Look for services that allow your data to be encrypted, but it must also clearly state the service provider does not have the encryption keys – you do. Apple does this, I believe.
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.
All this talk of encryption and sopenas is mostly pointless - all the police need to do is join any of the Telegram channels and see the evidence for themselves, like in this case - https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350438242/man-who-wanted-build-gallows-hear-jacinda-arderns-neck-snap-guilty-threats-kill
No doubt there are private channels but there’s absolutely no shortage of criminal stuff happening out in the open.
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.
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.
All.non E2EE chat apps do this. Also Apple, Facebook, google etc. And don’t forget the us gov has no problem giving a gag order and demand backdoors and encryption keys (lavamail).
My younger sister (Gen Z) talks smack about my generation (millennial) overuse of emojis and this Telegram post is making me agree with her. The attempt at cutesie emojis is jarring.
