Why use telegram rather than skype?

[myhand]

More and more people are using Telegram and I was wondering why people prefer this over Skype?

Is it more anonymous or better privacy or ?

 

[Martin Everson]

Skype allows the US government to listen in on your conversation

Never discuss or send anything private on Skype. You might as well have the CIA, FBI and NSA in your room with you if you use Skype.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xweqbq/microsoft-contractors-listen-to-skype-calls
P.S I wonder if Skype Contractors all happen to have CIA badges

 

[JohnLocke]

Are you serious @Martin Everson I always thought it would be safe using Skype.. just installed Telegram now

 

[void]

I always thought it would be safe using Skype

never ever put anything sensitive or supposed to stay private to skype, whatsapp, facebook messenger or similar

telegram is a bit different level but still under control of the third party

if you need a truly safe (chat, voice, video) communication channel run your own SIP server with SSL support or through your own VPN and take a good care about your client device (phone, pc, whatever you're using) at the same time

 

[Martin Everson]

Are you serious @Martin Everson I always thought it would be safe using Skype.. just installed Telegram now

Microsoft Skype is completely compromised. I switched to telegram last year. Same with Whatsapp after Facebook bought and integrated it with Facebook it should never be used along with Facebook just use Telegram. Facebook/Whatsapp is also just a US intelligence database for getting dirt, monitoring, influencing and building profiles on over 2bn people .

 

[Sols]

My biggest gripe with Telegram is that it's not open source, which to me is a problem when it comes to encryption and privacy. Encryption is based on fairly simple mathematical principles and doesn't get weaker by being public or stronger by being private. I only use Telegram with people who insist and won't consider alternatives, as it's probably better than unencrypted messaging.

Most journalists/newspapers, privacy advocates, political activists, and other privacy-conscious advocates I come in contact with tend to prefer Signal. It's endorsed and recommended by EFF, ACLU, many newspapers (for anonymous tips/whistle blowing), and famously also Edward Snowden.

Some links:

https://signal.org/
https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/how-use-signal-android
https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/how-use-signal-ios
Another one I see pop up is Threema. It's even more closed-source than Telegram, though.

 

[Martin Everson]

Selling point of Telegram is that it is not American i.e its roots are Russian. Hence U.S intelligence services shouldnt have easy access access to it like they do with US companies such as Signal, Whatsapp, TOR, Skype and every US VPN providers data etc.

Anything with U.S connection is unsafe and shouldn't be used for private messaging. The U.S/NSA has no limitation on gathering data on non-US citizens and playing world police....so please remember that.

 

[Sols]

I was expecting that response.

In my opinion, the whole "US knows everything about everyone" trope is a fairly weak argument when we're talking about an open source messaging service built on publicly known and shared principles of encryption. US law enforcement has problems with encrypted messaging services, such as Signal. They even struggle with iMessage; i.e. the Apple—FBI debacle that seemingly was only resolved once a security flaw was found and used to access the phone.

The most commonly exploited weakness isn't the app or the protocol: it's the person or the devices used. It's like that famous XKCD comic: Security

While the effective net security is perhaps, probably, but unverifiably the same with Telegram and Signal (and Wickr, Threema, and so on), I'd rather trust an open source US-based solution than a closed-source Russian/UAE solution, but to each their own. They are all (hopefully) better than Skype, though.

 

[Martin Everson]

I love it....ignore is bliss. It allows people to continue to use these services and US government to monitor their activity. Misinformation is the greatest tool in any governments arsenal i.e keep using US based products....they wouldnt want you to use a non-US product outside their reach would they...lol.

I'd rather trust an open source US-based solution than a closed-source Russian/UAE solution, but to each their own.

Hummmm Russia or UAE spying on me. Whats the worse they could do to me and how could they enforce any action..lol? US spying on me whats the worse they could do and how could they enforce any action?...oh oh wait a minute .

 

[JohnSpain]

In contrast to Telegram, secure messengers such as Signal, WhatsApp and Wire have encrypted end-to-end communications turned on by default. So your chat data is stored, and encrypted, only on your phone or other device that you’re chatting from, and not on a server. My guess is that most Telegram users dont use encryption. Anyway, if its hosted by a US company the US will have full access to your data, for sure (goes for Telegram or any other software).

I would recommend Wire - The most secure collaboration platform · Wire

 

[Martin Everson]

If company or servers are in US then forget it. That's the beginning and end for me in terms of trusting a service.

WhatsApp and Wire have encrypted end-to-end communications turned on by default.

lol we all remember the below for whatsapp. Don't trust anything they say its a service thats owned by FBI Book....sorry Facebook. Encryption can and is always circumvented with these backdoors....sorry bugs until the next one is discovered by the public .

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...door-guardian-issue-how-to-safe-a7525506.html

 

[alexundu]

im from eastern europe, sry i won't say country, but here the local 'CIA' has access to telegram and users

 

[Sulu]

Free/Libre open source software for the win.

Free as in Freedom, unlike proprietary.

 

[neweraoffshore]

What about using "Signal", it is open source(github: signalapp), has android/ios/desktop clients, it is not as popular as telegram and doesn't use a good virtual sms number blocker, so you can use it with cheap anonymous sms numbers. You can also set a password to encrypt the local text database, set a password for re-registering the phone number in case authorities ceased the number, incognito keyboard to disable auto-learning (so if an investigator has your phone they can't check the dictionary for common used words), individual screen saver timeout and many more features telegram doesn't have (didn't use telegram for at least one year so i compared it how i knew telegram)

Also worth to mention is Bitmessage (github: Bitmessage/PyBitmessage) there you have a decentralized network to send and receive messages. You will get an automatically generated BTC-Wallet like address. The problem here is that there was a serious exploit in the software a year ago. It was fixed but I guess this discouraged the author of this program to continue. However if you just want to write texts and don't need an ios app, then I consider this software to be the most secret messaging tool which is public. But I guess most of you prefer a more user friendly software. For example if you want to send a jpg you have to convert it to for example base64 and then send it as text.
, guess nobody would like to do that .

//Edit: Sorry @Sols , just saw after posting that you already mentioned signal