this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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I heard that in USA Telegram is used mostly by conservatives, trans-haters and drug dealers. But in Russia where I was born and where I have been living until the war, Telegram was a single source of alternative news and the main tool for opposition to putin. I had a talk with an Iranian guy recently and he told me the same: in Iran Telegram is the only source of non-state-propaganda news.
I do not care that Durov is just a billionaire who makes money on the trend of privacy. But I remember how Telegram successfully fought against attempt of blocking in Russia in 2018 by providing regular updates and using different techniques to avoid blocking. An attack on Telegram for me is an attack on the latest opposition to putin, khamenei, lukashenko and others.
I too heard Russia claimed they could not block it. Could be deliberate theatre to bolster its reputation.
It seems Russia has a back door key into Telegram.
Edit: Russia is complaining about the arrest.
Pavel Durov has visited Russia more than 50 times since his "exile" in 2014
It may not be just the Kremlin. I've had several cases where I wrote about something in a Telegram chat, stuff I had never talked about before, and in a matter of seconds started seeing related ads on Facebook.
Alternatively, it could be the keyboard leaking all text, or I could have some other spyware, but I've only had that happen to me between Telegram and Facebook.
Then again, Telegram group chats are unencrypted, and personal chats are unencrypted by default.
Not quite true. They are server-side encrypted, not end-to-end. Still bad and I had no idea until I looked it up just now (thanks to you).
I use Gboard keyboard on my phone which undermines my Signal privacy. I could use my laptop instance of Signal to prevent leakage.