Telegram is giving away FREE Premium subscriptions! All they need from you is to use your cell phone as a relay to text out their OTP codes! And the recipient of the OTP sees your phone number! What could POSSIBLY go wrong with this deal?
PLEASE don’t use Telegram! I personally recommend Matrix as it’s totally FOSS, you can self host, there are tons of front end clients to choose from. Or even use Signal. I have my own issues with Signal, the fact they don’t allow third party clients, you can’t self-host, they have a proprietary shim in their stack that only they know what it does, they were pushing crypto, etc, but at least Signal is better than this garbage.
I imagine SMS authorisation texts are Telegrams biggest single expense, they are for Signal https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/
Telcos know that authentication is about the only remaining use case for SMS and are not going to turn down the revenue stream.
That said this idea from Telegram sounds absurd. Not least I expect most contracts prevent reselling free SMS’s like this. The security implications have got to be significant too.
Telcos know that authentication is about the only remaining use case for SMS and are not going to turn down the revenue stream.
And it can’t die fast enough, as it’s essentially the same as broadcasting your sensitive information over unencrypted radio.
Apart from security, phone number based user identification is such a half-assed approach and I still don’t get why Signal wants to die on that hill. It’s inconvenient, yet trivial, for anyone to register a second, third or tenth phone number. With a bit more knowledge and inconvenience, even anonymously. It adds so little.
It’s pretty drastically harder to register 100 phone numbers, especially in your target region, than 100 email addresses. Major spammers and such work with automation across many accounts, this isn’t designed around someone with 10 accounts.
Man this is so scuffed! Offering free subscriptions in exchange for using your personal phone as a relay for OTP codes is a recipe for disaster.
Wow, that’s super sketchy.
I’m trying to get my wife to use something decent, and I think Signal is the way to go. It’s focused on P2P communication so it’s a better replacement for SMS and whatnot, but it also has groups so it can also replace MMS. She likes Discord, but I don’t think she’ll be as keen to try out Matrix since she’ll just wonder why I don’t just use Discord.
Try Simplex Chat
Looks cool, thanks! I’m interested in P2P platforms in general, and this seems like an interesting middleground between P2P and centralized.
My wife knows that if she doesn’t use Session, she needs to call me and hope I pick up. Granted, she only uses it with me, but that’s already a win in my book.
IDK, forcing someone to use a certain app to contact you seems a bit extreme, and something that could cause conflict in a relationship. But that’s just me, I obviously don’t know your situation.
People in the privacy community need to get over the unrealistic dream that regular people will adopt Matrix when we can’t even get them to use Signal. The only way Matrix will have mass adoption is through getting a lot of corporate clients. Then the workers might choose to use it personally too after being familiar with it.
Matrix still doesn’t have a multi account client with threads.
I don’t mind Matrix, but every time I bring this up to a hard core Matrix defender to how the clients are lacking, they don’t have much to counter.
I’m writing a new Matrix client that’s focused specifically on being a Discord-like dead simple experience for professional people – it’s under GPLv3 and written in pure Dart
Probably will have the first actual release in one to two months – please tell me what you would like in terms of features so I can shove it into my already massive backlog
Also Simplex but I find element client very comfortable to use.
Or good old XMPP!
XMPP doesn’t support modern features and the protocol is older than some of the people here
It has more “modern” features than Simplex 🤷♂️
Define “modern features”?
HTTP is old too, what’s your point? It get’s constant updates via XEPS, and currently runs: WhatsApp, Messenger, Zoom, iMessage, and more. It’s perfectly capable. And offers federation out of the box.
The single reason XMPP died off in the tech crowd is that Signal killed it.
I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts about Signal and DeltaChat for messaging
Signal and DeltaChat, as well as Simplex and some others e2e communication solutions, are adequate from a technical point of view.
The main issue is always adoption. You can have the most convenient way to safely communicate with people, it’ll be useless if nobody you’re talking to wants to use it.
So, since Signal is very easy to set up and use as well as the most adopted, it’s currently the best pick for regular conversations.
Signal is fine for a drop-in WhatsApp replacement. I use it for chatting to my friends casually. For something you need more security for you could do encrypted emails as that doesn’t require exchanging phone numbers, or ideally just arrange to meet up in-person and discuss things so you don’t leave any kind of digital or paper trail.
Yes, meet up, place your phones on the table, and discuss 👍 Facebook ads won’t change at all 😉
Obviously you don’t have your phones on you. Otherwise what’s the point of meeting up in person.
I said Signal, meant to say Sessions
Been using Deltachat for about a year, so far so good. I dunno how secure it really is (never took the time to check) but it’s been reliable. Multi-device was kinda quirky at first but has gotten better.
Signal good, I’ve never heard of Deltachat
Reading the discussion here. I’d never heard of xmpp. Probably just never registered as a messaging alternative. Just checked out https://xmpp.org/. Wow! Tons of apps. Even some android apps on fdroid. Guess I’ve got some exploring to do.
XMPP is an old protocol. GTalk (google talk) and Whatsapp used it, then extended it, then didn’t give back to the community. So here we are…
The problem with alternative protocols and apps and whatnot is that people are reluctant to change and won’t try anything new if only 2-3 other people use that protocol/service. I can’t even convince my best friends to use Signal, let alone XMPP.
https://joinjabber.org is also a good resource for learning about XMPP.
Xmpp died. Don’t try to bring back the dead
XMPP died for no good reason, we absolutely should be bringing it back instead of trying to reinvent the wheel again and again unsuccessfully.
IRC v3 anyone?
Nah, just call it retro.
I would use Simplex chat over matrix
This link doesn’t work for me. Do you have an alternative/original? I’d like to read some context and explanation.
Works for me, but here is where it leads; https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/26/free-premium-telegram-subscription/
Thanks!
One can never expect power of any kind to not be abused!
But I don’t wanna see ads (╥﹏╥)
