[throwaway4747l]

Ctrl-F "Signаl": 10 instances

Seriously, it'd be nice if we could have one thread about Telegram without S-advocates showing up and complaining about "security". Yes, we know Telegram isn't as secure, yadda yadda yadda. Now if only Signal provided half the features Telegram does, maybe non-cryptonerds would have heard of it.

[dang]

The problem with a comment like this is that it adds to what it is complaining about.

While I have you: Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

[throwaway4747l]

I try to maintain some consistency (as you probably noticed) but as I switch devices I honestly can't be bothered to remember the throwaway handle I last used. If that's really an issue, I'll try to stick to a handle that's easy to remember, or keep this one.

Out of honesty however, I should tell you that I value my anonymity and don't want an extensive posting history to be used to track and identify me. As pg said, keep your online footprint small, yadda yadda. So I can space out the intervals at which I make accounts but I can't promise I won't vanish the identity I created after a while.

[maccam912]

Yeah honestly I just scroll right past them. I use telegram for my "Can you pick up some bananas on the way home?" messages. If I ever had a confidential tip for some investigative journalist I'd use signal. But it gets annoying if every post with the word "telegram" in the title gets the same "But signal is more secure!" response unrelated to the content of the article.

[maqp]

If you only use Signal for sensitive stuff, you leak extremely valuable metadata about when you discuss sensitive stuff. When you use Signal for everything, it's harder to tell if you asked for bananas or for a revolution ;)

[newen]

Doesn't Signal give out your phone number to whoever you message?

[maqp]

Both sender and recipient need to have each other in contacts to message one another.

[maqp]

If you'd understand security is a property of all features you'd understand that Telegram lacks even basic features like group chats and cross-platform chats. From that viewpoint Telegram is outright dangerous to use: it leaks a metric fuckton of private data to server from where it's abusable both by Durov (who might run out of money) and by anyone who hacks the server (like Belarussian intelligence establishment). I'm one of those S-advocates and I'm here for a real reason.

Also, Signal is getting those features, at slower pace sure because it's not trivial to do things securely, but at least there's zero technical debt compared to Telegram, who can't suddenly drop all insecure features, nor implement E2EE without starting basically from scratch.

Maybe if Telegram provided the security Signal does you wouldn't have concerned people telling about Signal ;)