Comment by crossroadsguy
10 hours ago
One of the challenges with Telegram is - they regularly re-enable settings inside the app/account that you had specifically disabled. So at any point you don't know what is happening and what is not. Meaning, even if you didn't see a thing, a malicious file might be sitting all warm and fuzzy on your computer - among possible other things. I used to like the snappiness of this app (and it is still snappier than almost all other IM apps combined, by a margin), but after a while I realised it was a ticking time-bomb (to keep it installed on the desktop) and possibly a scammer safe haven, nothing else.
A lot of companies do this but I always get a ton of hate for saying this: Telegram is the worst offender I've seen. If you start digging through their apps, you see a ton of security practices that are anything but secure. And one of the hundreds of reasons I treat Telegram as the plague: get it away from me and burn it with fire.
I've never seen a legit good hearted person ever use Telegram. It's usually what grifters and scammers prefer to use. Or Signal.
My family uses it to communicate on devices that don't support iMessage (mainly Windows and Linux installs) because it's one of the precious few cross-platform messengers that doesn't treat desktop users as second class or as an afterthought.
Signal is legit. The entire stack is open source, and messages are E2EE.
Telegram is connected to Eastern European and the Middle Eastern countries and not in a good way, and the server-side components are closed source. There is no E2EE by default.
There's a few communities that use Telegram because it seems to be one of the few that is both generally usable by the average person and by default has at least a little respect for separating your online identity from your real life identity. Which is sad because I agree it's a bit of a dumpster fire when it comes to security and privacy beyond that.
Counterpoint: I have. Although Telegram is less popular in the US. I try to get all my friends using Signal.
I prefer to keep the contents of my message secure from the panopticon.
> Or Signal
It's kind of hard to hash out what you're saying here
There's at least millions of such persons
> I've never seen a legit good hearted person ever use Telegram. It's usually what grifters and scammers prefer to use. Or Signal.
TIL I'm not a legit good hearted person.
Guess I'll remove myself from the organ donation registry.
All big companies pull these kind of tricks. Another variation is to retire the old setting and introduce a new one with a deceptive name that is default on again.
Can you please tell me what settings get auto re-enabled? I use Telegram as my primary messenger app. I just want to make a more informed decision if I should switch to Signal or something.
>if I should switch to Signal or something.
Yes
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48923935
Note there’s no info on that page on which settings get reenabled, only general list of grievances with telegram, mainly from a privacy/security perspective.
You absolutely should use Signal instead.
Presumably the risk is mitigated somewhat with the Flatpak version (`org.telegram.desktop`)?
Not on Linux. But if that is a safe variant then yeah great. Also, I see https://flatpak.org (is this the one you meant?) has Telegram has one of the showcases apps on the homepage so I guess they would have done their due dilligence.
This hasn’t happened to me absolutely ever in 10+ years.
In the distant past this meant more. Vendors shipped one option for everyone. Now with things like A/B testing and other application 'smart' behavior which ends up meaning we all have different experiences.
For example?