“Telegram is not a private messenger. There’s nothing private about it. It’s the opposite. It’s a cloud messenger where every message you’ve ever sent or received is in plain text in a database that Telegram the organization controls and has access to it”
“It’s like a Russian oligarch starting an unencrypted version of WhatsApp, a pixel for pixel clone of WhatsApp. That should be kind of a difficult brand to operate. Somehow, they’ve done a really amazing job of convincing the whole world that this is an encrypted messaging app and that the founder is some kind of Russian dissident, even though he goes there once a month, the whole team lives in Russia, and their families are there.”
" What happened in France is they just chose not to respond to the subpoena. So that’s in violation of the law. And, he gets arrested in France, right? And everyone’s like, oh, France. But I think the key point is they have the data, like they can respond to the subpoenas where as Signal, for instance, doesn’t have access to the data and couldn’t respond to that same request. To me it’s very obvious that Russia would’ve had a much less polite version of that conversation with Pavel Durov and the telegram team before this moment"
Why is this interview happening inside a sauna?
If you watch the video - its explained starting at 1:13, Moxie built it himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPRi7mAGp7I
That’s fucking awesome
Moxie might not be right on every issue and might even be a part-time fed but his bona fides are impeccable
Dude is an OG from WAY back, used to frequent EFnet in the 90s and was already “elite” then.
Why is this interview happening inside a sauna?
It’s his personal sauna. He built it himself.
Why did he invite the hot reporter chick to his sauna? would be the follow-up question…
You answered yourself.
Why did he invite the hot reporter chick to his sauna? would be the follow-up question…
Right? If they’re just chatting this should be happening in a jacuzzi with nice glasses of milk 🍼 👍
Somehow all these years I thought that Marlinspike is either Swedish or Finnish, so the sauna would be on brand.
for the thumbnail :)
Why not? I thought it was een interesting choice ;-P
To me, that is just clickbait.
Like in a sauna you should be completely exposed or something
They say the trick to public speaking is to picture the audience naked, but I actually prefer to do my interviews in a sauna so the audience pictures me naked.
It’s also important to continue educating people about the fact that Signal is incredibly problematic as well, but not in the way most people think.
The issue with Signal is that your phone number is metadata. And people who think metadata is “just” data or that cross-referencing is some kind of sci-fi nonsense, are fundamentally misunderstanding how modern surveillance works.
By requiring phone numbers, Signal, despite its good encryption, inherently builds a social graph. The server operators, or anyone who gets that data, can see a map of who is talking to whom. The content is secure, but the connections are not.
Being able to map out who talks to whom is incredibly valuable. A three-letter agency can take the map of connections and overlay it with all the other data they vacuum up from other sources, such as location data, purchase histories, social media activity. If you become a “person of interest” for any reason, they instantly have your entire social circle mapped out.
Worse, the act of seeking out encrypted communication is itself a red flag. It’s a perfect filter: “Show me everyone paranoid enough to use crypto.” You’re basically raising your hand.
So, in a twisted way, Signal being a tool for private conversations, makes it a perfect machine for mapping associations and identifying targets. The fact that Signal is operated centrally with the server located in the US, and it’s being developed by people with connections to US intelligence while being constantly pushed as the best solution for private communication should give everyone a pause.
The kicker is that thanks to gag orders, companies are legally forbidden from telling you if the feds come knocking for this data. So even if Signal’s intentions are pure, we’d never know how the data it collects is being used. The potential for abuse is baked right into the phone-number requirement.
Opinion: I think painting in Signal in such negative light is more harmful in the practical sense. Having fragmented messaging towards the public that does not care about many of these aspects just makes them a lot more hesitant to change, from my perspective.
We as a community should, in my opinion, pick a “good enough” solution for the majority of the people we interact with. That in itself is a market force to show interest and demand for private solutions. Most people I know don’t have the tools or knowledge or time to understand nuances and all they’ll hear are conflicting messages.
For us more technically inclined people: hell yeah, let’s figure out the ideal model and bring it up to maturity so others can join when it’s fleshed out. E.g. when lemmy came to my attention in the reddit 3rd party app fiasco, I was really confused on how to sign up and use it. And I’m no stranger to tech.
Edit: spelling
We as a community should, in my opinion, pick a “good enough” solution for the majority of the people we interact with.
I’d probably suggest Deltachat. It’s decentralized and has always on encryption, but is so incredibly simple and easy to onboard and use, and doesn’t require a phone number or even an email. It also works on all platforms with a single app.
There are plenty of good enough options like SimpleX Chat out there that don’t have this problem. The whole argument that people should just ignore the obvious issue with Signal is frankly weird.
Accept defects != ignore
My original comment that you replied to was explaining the defects. People are free to decide whether they want to accept them or not. Your comment is saying that it’s harmful to discuss these defects which implies that we should just ignore them.
I was talking about the “educating people” part. I interpreted as “let’s steer them away from Signal towards a better solution”. If it’s not the intent then my comment is irrelevant
Again, I think people should be aware that there are alternatives to Signal, and be able to make an informed decision on the trade offs that matter to them. My personal view is that there are absolutely better platforms than Signal, but if people understand the potential risks with Signal and use it because it’s convenient or their other contacts use it, etc., that’s entirely up to them. It’s just not what I would personally recommend if people want privacy.
Fair enough
You think we’re living in an ideal world, but we’re not. Most of our family and friends use WhatsApp and other big tech messaging apps. You make valid points, but they’re just a dream if messaging means people and if there aren’t people, it’s not messaging.
Apparently they don’t store contact info.
https://signal.org/blog/looking-back-as-the-world-moves-forward/
The problem is that you just have to trust them because only people who actually operate the server know what they do or do not store. Trust me bro, is not a viable security model. As a rule, you have to assume that any info an app collects, such as your phone number, can now be used in adversarial fashion against you.
Yeah there’s a reason they don’t allow you to use your own self hosted server.
People just accepting what companies say is how we ended up in the current mess. But here we are again. Companies work around how people perceive things to be secure and private all the time. It’s just one small cog in the big machine.
It’s how some NGOs are part of a intelligence and surveillance network but people only focus on the social work and it becomes immoral to criticize the good things they do as a cover.
There’s also reluctance to release it in f-droid. They say they want to becontrol the distribution, but they have no problem with Apple and Google being the main distribution platforms. They haven’t even looked at unified push. And that just adds to the “there’s something else going on” factors.
Signal protocol might be bullet proof but the app supplier, centralized server, and phone number requirement and the most mainstream OS aren’t. When you combine with how mainstream OS companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google work together with the feds, there’s ways that the bulletproof protocol may not be sufficient and is only a part of the bigger picture. There’s also US government spying on notification.
They may work without them but the inconvenience will deter 99% of people. Being dependent these external factors, It just doesn’t feel as bullet proof as a whole.
Whatsapp also uses the signal protocol, but you wouldn’t trust them because they’re under facebook, would you?
I also find it really weird how aggressively Signal is being pushed everywhere, and how any criticism of it gets dismissed or ridiculed. It feels a bit like a cult at this point.
I’m fully convinced its just like apple’s support: they make some vagueish unprovable claims about privacy, and have a functional and shiny app. That’s enough for people to overlook all the privacy issues, and build a cult-like fanbase.
Like if anyone walked into a privacy conference and said, “Hey everyone, I’m going to make a private messaging service. I need everyone’s phone number!”, they’d get laughed out of the room. But because their app looks nice, then people need to develop the cult-like following whenever it gets attacked, because its touching on an unresolved cognitive dissonance of this being a terrible idea.
Pretty much yeah, and they’ve had a really good marketing campaign too. They got a whole bunch of prominent tech influencers incessantly pushing it, and it just feels like a massive astroturf campaign to me. Like you said, if a random person pitched this idea, they’d be laughed at, but you get some people with clout to do it, and it sticks because everybody respects them and trusts them.
And that is the problem with anything you don’t write yourself. And for anything you do write yourself: Are you smarter than the three-letter agencies?
There are plenty of chat services that aren’t centralized and hosted in the USA.
Sure… and my point is that you have to trust those services that aren’t hosted in the USA. It’s a choice you have to make. I’m not judging either way, just pointing out because what I responded to in the comment to which I replied was:
The problem is that you just have to trust them
Which is true of open source unless you read the code and can verify nothing nefarious exists; which is true if you use a service in a country you trust; which is true no matter what you’re doing.
Not all entities are deserving of the same level of trust - some are more trustworthy than others - but you are still making a decision to trust someone unless you write the code yourself or verify the code yourself.[1]
And had the capability and time to do so ↩︎
Which is true of open source unless you read the code and can verify nothing nefarious exists
Not at all. Not everyone needs to audit open source, only a few interested experts do. Most importantly, auditing is possible because its out in the open.
The just trust me model of signal means its impossible to audit, unless they give us their centralized database and server code.
If you are not auditing the source code, you are trusting those that are.
You don’t have to trust anybody when you run your own server, or you use a server that doesn’t collect information it has no business collecting.
You don’t have to trust anybody when you run your own server,
You have to trust the people that wrote the code.
or you use a server that doesn’t collect information it has no business collecting.
Again, you’re trusting the authors of the code.
Which is fine, but it’s a choice to trust them.
You have to trust the people that wrote the code.
There’s a big difference between having confidence in open source code that has been audited by many people, and knowing for a fact that the service collects specific information. In the former case, you can never be absolutely sure that the code is not malicious so there is always a risk, but in the latter case you know for a fact that the service is collecting inappropriate information and you have to trust that people operating the service are not using it in adversarial ways. These two scenarios are in no way equivalent.
Which is fine, but it’s a choice to trust them.
It’s a choice to trust the entire open source community around the project and all the security researchers who have been looking at the code.
Frankly, I have trouble believing that you don’t understand the difference here and are making your argument in good faith.
Frankly, I have trouble believing that you don’t understand the difference here and are making your argument in good faith.
Let’s back up to what I replied to in the first place:
You don’t have to trust anybody
I even took the time to quote that, because it’s important.
Of course there are different levels of trust. But what you said is flatly wrong and misinformation, if you want to get technical about it. Arguing in bad faith? I beg your fucking pardon, friend.
Just becuase it’s less likely to find nefarious code in open source doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There ahve been multiple cases of it found in open source code. Blindly trusting something because it’s open source or you host it on your own server is a very very false sense of security, especially in the context of the larger discussion, which came about in regard to what information is exposed by certain messaging clients.
It’s also a matter of the importance of what you’re doing.
I wrote a little CRUD app a while back to track me giving my cat medication. I sanitized inputs, but I left it open without a login on my server, just an obscure URL that didn’t get published anywhere. All you could do was click a button to indicate the cat had been medicated, or another button to delete the latest entry. That was plenty of security for that. If I was writing a banking app, I’d use a bit more.
So yes, in the same way as that, hosting something you use to chat with friends about whatever is one thing; trying to communicate secretly from a country where your comms might lead to being put to death is quite another. And in the latter case, it’s important to know that no matter what you use, unless you wrote it or read all the source code, you are trusting others with your life. Perhaps you feel comfortable doing that, but you should be aware of it.
So no, this is not a discussion in bad faith at all, it is valuable on multiple levels.
And the client, too.
Precisely.
And it’s worth repeating here - the level of trust needed is affected by the nature of what you might lose if that trust is broken. For non-important things, trusting a third-party company is probably fine. If you’re in a country and being found out might mean you get put to death, though, the stakes are a bit higher.
Trust me bro
Yeah, this is the viable security model.
I’m not a developer, but if the client and server code is open (AGPLv3), you can definitely know what they do or store.
Except you have no idea what’s actually running on the server. Only people who operate it know.
I appreciate the comment on the matter. This is good information to know and consider.
People should know that Signal is encrypted and private, but won’t make you a ghost.
That being said, the majority of people are not interested in privacy so getting them to use Signal over WhatsApp or SMS is a 99% win.
The question here is why not get people to switch to a better platform like SimpleX or even matrix with something like Element. I don’t find that Signal does anything better in practice.
And I’m not arguing not to.
But I tried to get everybody I know to contact me on signal or simplex. For a year. Only one person switched and they did so to signal. Because it was easier and more people were on it. I myself stopped using simplex because not enough people are using it that I know.
So where the rubber meets the road, if anybody wants to use signal I’m good with that because its good for 99% of all things.
If we (as privacy enthusiasts) want to promote the better apps, they need to be and appear less niche so they’re more acceptable.
Yeah, there are network effects at play here. Getting people to move off a platform is very difficult because they need their contacts to move to, and their contacts need theirs in turn. Some people are willing to use multiple messaging apps, but most don’t. I’d argue that’s why it’s important to promote alternatives to Signal. The more popular they become the easier it is to get people to move to them.
signal is open source no?
There are forks that don’t require phone numbers.
Yes, but those are basically separate platforms like Session. Signal does not federate, and there’s only a single server in the US that requires your phone number to sign up.
Not effectively, since it’s centralized in the US and you have no idea what code the server is running.
Signal does claim to have their server code open, but they went a whole year one time without updating it, until they received some backlash for it.
you can never validate what code a server is running, so having FOSS server code is kinda a moot point: it can’t add anything useful to the privacy conversation
the only way you can guarantee privacy is with the client code, and they have repeatable builds so you can validate the code that’s encrypting the messages, and in that case it barely even matters if their server is streaming all the data they receive to some shady other place… especially with sealed sender
you can never validate what code a server is running
Most halfway-decent messaging services (unlike signal) are self-hostable. So yes with actual open source software, that’s very possible.
that comes down to a difference in philosophy i think… signal have detailed their reasoning for not making signals servers decentralised and self hostable, and i don’t disagree with some of them… i think everything is a trade-off, and decentralisation has scaling and usability issues
signal has done a pretty good job of creating a platform that’s much much better than alternatives in a package that’s consumable by the general public
i’m not sure that something that’s more like matrix, or xmpp, etc could do that
it might be theoretically and technically not quite as perfect, but its impact on increased privacy across the globe has been far larger because they’ve made some of those compromises
I can’t really trust anyone’s security philosophy when they market their service as “secure”, but then have it built on required phone numbers (linkable to your real identity), and a single centralized US-based server subject to national security letters.
Anyone who came up with this idea of security should be laughed out of the room.
I’m convinced signal’s entire support is similar to apple’s : they make vague untestable claims about security, whilst having a shiny and functional app.
There are so many self-hostable alternatives that have signal beat on both those, that make any reason for using it moot.
you can never validate what code a server is running
Really? if so how can we trust Lemmy?
you can’t, and shouldn’t… lemmy never claimed to be, nor has the architecture to enable it to be a private service. lemmy instances are run by arbitrary people on the internet, and some of them do run forked versions of the codebase (eg blahaj)… we have no way of verifying what’s running on the server
but interaction on lemmy doesn’t require trust. i don’t think anyone is expecting lemmy to be private
@dessalines@lemmy.ml I’m not a developer could you explain this?
The above poster is wrong. You can absolutely trust lemmy, because its open source and self hostable. You can build the project from source (like a cooking recipe), and run it yourself.
Isn’t it reproducible?
The link is not working. Would you be so kind as to provide the article link?
The server operators, or anyone who gets that data, can see a map of who is talking to whom.
!citation needed
Citation for what exactly? Go read up on how networking works, entire textbooks are available. The server has access to all the data the client sends it. How do you think you get paired with another person to chat, by magic?
Dude for the first 15s I thought this is porn
its the sauna
How I hate that saunas are associated with porn and sex. It’s not supposed to be sexual and more importantly it’s an awful, just terrible place to have sex
I don’t know man, those benches are nice for a variety of positions. Plus, you are already naked…
Just trust me on this one, 80’C+ room just isn’t the place for that sort of exercise. And it’s not like your heart rate isn’t up already lol. It’s a terrible experience
Slow down, big daddy! You can be gentle at it sometimes.
I want you to actually try sauna sex and report back to me, if you don’t believe me. But don’t say I didn’t warn you lol
Raising money for Signal with OnlyFans
Remember how Telegram said they would stop providing Chinese authorities with user data during the Hong Kong protests. Implying that they were doing it at some stage.
Also remember how the FBI have said in several leaked documents they hate signal because the only data they get is when the user signed up and the last time they were online, nothing else.
Which app would you rather use?
how much data do the FBI get from telegram? do you think the russian owner (who got arrested in france for refusing to make changes demanded of him by glowing authorities) is very likely to give any of your info over to american 3 letter agencies?
I think it probably doesn’t matter what he wants, it only matters that the data exists at all. If the owner is not giving permission, that’s one thing. But I’m inclined to believe that those American 3-letter agencies aren’t the sort to ask permission.
All it takes is one disgruntled systems engineer who thinks they don’t get paid enough. An agency comes knocking with a sizable offer of cash, and they’ll get the backdoor they want.
I’ve been saying this for years. Telegram is a social media app.
That’s absurd coming from the founder of a FOSS messaging app who actively decided not to let Signal federate and rejected any other open source Signal client. Not only that, even now you can’t truly use Signal’s new “username” feature. If any of the recipients have your number stored in their phonebook, irrespective of whether you know them or not, the username goes for a toss. This was/is the problem with Telegram’s username feature. Signal knew this and still decided to go ahead with it. Not to mention never doing anything about completely removing the phone number from the account after its creation. This has been, by design, a privacy and hence safety threat, and even after the username feature was implemented, this not getting implemented is very concerning.
you can’t truly use Signal’s new “username” feature. If any of the recipients have your number stored in their phonebook, irrespective of whether you know them or not, the username goes for a toss.
Hm. I haven’t interacted with a new Signal user in a while… but I do see in settings two knobs: “who can see my phone number” and “who can find me with my phone number”. Both of these settings can be set to “nobody”.
I’m guessing if I set “who can find me with my phone number” to “nobody”, then even if someone has my phone number in their contacts, they wouldn’t know I’m a Signal user?
Don’t forget not allowing you to sync historical messages between your phone and PC. Apparently somehow that’s just too complicated.
What are you talking about?
I literally installed Signal on my Linux laptop yesterday and it automatically downloaded all my messages from my phone.
Last time I did that, it would only sync new messages
Its not about being complicated, its about dumping the whole chat history with just a few seconds of physical acceas to the device.
LEA has used this method with messangers like Whatsapp for years to quicly exfiltrade the data from a victims phone to other software.
There’s a pin. Just require the pin.
The Pin is not designed and used for such an authentication. Also can be changed at any time:
How do I manage or change my PIN?
On your phone, go to Signal Settings > Account > Change your PIN
SimpleX is the most private of the big three. No phone number or account needed. Able to self host.
Why did they do it to themselves to name it after the herpes virus tho?
Because the most common transmission vector is via family members? (HSV 1)
E.g. Your crazy uncle or news max loving grandparents
Pardon my French but what the fuck is SimpleX?
Herpes. It’s sexually transmitted, and it’s lifelong. You don’t want it.
Geeez, who are the other two?
Pardon my French but what the fuck is SimpleX?
The body language in this video is wild.
Body language of the interviewer?
No, both. The interviewer seems extra comfortable at the start but by the end they both seem on the same level. I think in a good way, not sure it’s a good method to get a read on either of them if i know my friends 😆
What about the astrological signs of the people?
Where I am, Telegram is mainly used by alt- and far right figures close to Russia. Facts don’t matter in these circles any more. Feelings do. And Durov knows how to manage those.
These people are foolish to use telegram, it’s just a plain-text unencrypted app. Plus there’s scams and spam all the time on telegram but not on signal.
These people are foolish for reasons far worse than just using Telegram.
Unlike Signal, Telegram is successful in getting people to move away from Meta’s Whatsapp.
Idk about that. Signal is the main alternative to WA in some parts of europe.
Pretty sure signal is not the best option, but telegram should be avoided at all costs.
How is signal not the best option?
Signal is good because it is easy to get others on board because of its simplicity, while having good encryption and security. However, SimpleX is just a better option. No phone number required, the same encryption, you can make a new profile whenever you want and you can have however many you want at a time. The groups can hold thousands of people. You can have it automatically make a new anonymous profile for you for each contact and group so that you can’t be tracked across them apart from your writing style. There are no usernames, you add each other through links, which can be temporary or permanent, and you can add or remove a link whenever you want.
Sorry for that big wall of text, I just spat out all the things SimpleX is better for. I think that it’s platform is the future.
the tracking argument against signal is pretty weak imo… signal has no ability to build a social graph because in 2018 they implemented a feature called sealed sender which is a cryptographic mechanism that allows you to send a message without disclosing to signal who you are (the receiver still knows, and rate limiting still works)
the reality of signal having your phone number is they know you (as an identity/person) use signal and that’s it
I know about that and that’s why I’m not worried about them having my phone number, but its still a pointless requirement. What if I don’t have a phone number for privacy reasons? SimpleX is still better in every way other than simplicity.
i’d agree that for privacy alone simplex is probably better, but until it scales i’m not sure we can say that it will be able to scale. i have my doubts, simply because if you can have unlimited anonymous profiles, when it becomes a high value target then spam becomes a real problem, and then there’s only 2 major solutions that i can think of:
- raising the barrier to creating new accounts so that accounts become relatively expensive (essentially what the phone number does)
- spam filters, like email, which is a whole separate system that can be abused like it has been with email
Well spam seems pretty easy to combat. A lot of the groups make you talk to the admins and wait before you can talk, and you can have it so you approve contacts before they can contact you using one of your links. And if one of your links falls to spam, you can just delete it. I’d say spam isn’t really an issue.
that’s reasonable. perhaps the best service is one with both options: you can somehow have a verified account that lets you msg people you haven’t connected with (perhaps they have an “allow from verified” contact option), and join groups without verification, but that you can also have unlimited anonymous accounts that are assumed spammy
What do you mean?
DoDDOW uses it, it must be super secure /s
Why don’t we all just truly go FOSS and use matrix?
Are they in a sauna?
A floating sauna. He built this himself.
When you build a backdoor into your “encrypted messenger” its just a surveillance app
His NAME is MARLINSPIKE?? Like the ancestral home of Captain Haddock from Tintin?! We really are living in a simulation
It’s a surname, he used to be a boat punk younger.
