Are you talking about encryption at rest? Regardless, encryption by the server is worthless. It’s exactly why admins can delete content in chat rooms.
Comment on Telegram will now hand over your phone number and IP if you’re a criminal suspect
rdri@lemmy.world 2 months agoOh believe me, group chats are encrypted. Problem is, most of them are public, so that’s only to protect them from being exposed to dump/search server side. And yeah, their encryption is not e2e. That’s encryption nonetheless.
onlinepersona@programming.dev 2 months ago
rdri@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You’re still missing the fact that public chats can’t be adequately protected.
It’s just doesn’t really enhance privacy like E2E and I find it disingenuous to say “my chat app is encrypted” when you mean server encryption not E2E.
FWIW when they said that the “e2e” boom has yet to happen.
onlinepersona@programming.dev 2 months ago
You’re still missing the fact that public chats can’t be adequately protected.
Depends what you mean by “adequately” 🤔 With perfect forward secrecy (which matrix and signal have), seeing past messages isn’t possible. Seizing the servers is also not very useful unless people are connecting directly to the server. Anonymous public chats running on overlay networks like I2P and TOR might not even need encryption (although I wouldn’t trust a server that didn’t).
rdri@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Where something publicly exists anyone can set up a local archive to capture anything, regardless of what’s available at the moment of joining the chat. Also telegram has such a setting too. It’s useless when someone really wants to get you. They won’t need an access to telegram servers to get you.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Maybe client to server but that’s not saying much
teolan@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Telegram’s “encryption” does not protect in any way against dump/search server side (outside of secrets chats).
Telegram’s “encryption” only protects from your ISP spying, and it’s the kind of encryption that everyone implements. Any website that does not implement such encryption would show a big red “Not secure” warning in your browser.
rdri@lemmy.world 2 months ago
When they explained it it was specifically stated that it should be either impossible or too difficult. Keeping keys and content separately, that’s what it’s about iirc. Either way the point of telegram is not in privacy for everyone. You trade protection for convenience (cloud data and great clients), and if you want you can use secret chats. That’s it. Seeing their user base, it suits most people. We’ll see if their server data gets leaked or something, though it didn’t happen yet.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Just use something that isn’t a child abuse Russian chat app. There are so many better options.
rdri@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Use for what? Are there alternatives that aggregate news, have bot support, non-electron clients and immediately sync between desktop and mobile?
teolan@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s not what their marketing says.
Most people have zero idea what kind of security telegram provides.
teolan@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They’re lying? Encryption at rest does not protect at all against the server snooping around. When you send or receive a message, the server has to see it in plaintext unless you have E2EE. So there is a way for them to access the plaintext of any message you receive, and it happens automatically billions of times per day. It’s pretty easy.
rdri@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s wrong. There is no plaintext transfer. While a lot of stuff can potentially happen on server every second as you said, it doesn’t happen according to them. I don’t trust that fully either but that’s their argument. You can look up encryption schemes in their faq.