Fun fact: Recently FSB database on border crossings from 2014 to 2023 was leaked online and Durov visited Russia 50 times since 2015. In fact, he was in Russia the day the telegram was unblocked. I wonder why?
Signal works just fine, but Signal Desktop doesn't bring over old messages, since they're not stored in the cloud.
Given the number of data breaches the world experiences, I don't want every message thread I'm in available in plaintext on some company's servers. Just imagine an AI processing every conversation you've ever had.
I could imagine easy msg duplication over multiple devices to be a operational vulnerability. But honestly: most people don't need to worry about opsec. And it is very annoying that signal can't allow multidevice and data duplication, even Whatsapp solved that now
It would be nice if Signal supported that, and one day maybe it will, but it's not a dealbreaker for me. My linked devices have all the conversations I care about.
What I do care about is that I'm the only one that can read these messages and that they're a nonprofit funded by donations.
Interesting that the author highlights Telegram as associated with crypto bros and the far right. In my circles, Telegram is most known as used by whistleblowers and uncensored Ukraine war reporters. I suppose this is the obvious niche for "alternative" platforms - take anything that's banned or downranked on the mainstream platforms but for which there is still a substantial consumer demand.
It's heavily used by a ton of people in Ukraine, which is probably quite unwise given the strong circumstantial evidence for it being compromised by Russia.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 50.2 ms ] threadI've heard similar stories on and off but if you post the link you'd be the first to let me know the source.
Not saying it isn't true. Only pointing out I have not seen the source yet.
The DB was sold on darknet for huge money (200 000$+).
First person to report about this leak was this guy: https://t.me/zakharovchannel/1416?single
Multiple people so far have confirmed it's a real DB.
The announcement of the leak (by Zakharov[1]) was in https://t.me/zakharovchannel/1418.
Alburov[2], former head investigative journalist at Navalny’s ACF[3], confirmed(/bragged) that the the data matched their publications in https://x.com/alburov/status/1828143239615947234.
The source for most of the news articles on Durov specifically, published in iStories[4], is https://istories.media/news/2024/08/27/pavel-durov-priezzhal....
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Zakharov_(journalist)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Alburov
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Corruption_Foundation
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IStories
The user experience on Telegram is amazing, the responsiveness, messages arrive instantly on all devices, the apps are feature rich and just work
Nothing can compete to how good it is
I'm perhaps lucky in that I don't need the security and privacy of a service like Signal
Given the number of data breaches the world experiences, I don't want every message thread I'm in available in plaintext on some company's servers. Just imagine an AI processing every conversation you've ever had.
What I do care about is that I'm the only one that can read these messages and that they're a nonprofit funded by donations.
https://www.wsj.com/world/who-is-pavel-durov-telegram-founde...
https://archive.is/FFPt2
I think the author is just widening the definition (of intelligence agency) here and/or speculating.