A lot of privacy guides suggest avoiding Telegram. I understand that in its default mode there’s no E2EE (and no E2EE for groups at all). If people I know don’t wanttko use Signal, isn’t Telegram the lesser evil given it’s nicer privacy policy (than other popular ones)?
Say I use the FOSS version of it.
Depends on your goals.
For casual shit like sending files to yourself, bullshiting with memes, or stuff like that, the unknown factor of telegram doesn’t matter.
But it is an unknown. We don’t know what their server code looks like. So you can’t trust that it isn’t doing things other than what it is supposed to.
It’s a matter of preferences tbh.
We don’t know what anyones server code looks like. The code that is published may not be the one they are actually running.
In fact Signal stopped publishing server side code a few years back, and only resumed after the community got angry: https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/04/06/it-looks-like-signal-isnt-as-open-source-as-you-thought-it-was-anymore/
Well, that’s true. But if there’s published server code, it’s at least better than none.
There’s a point where you either decide to use the service, or just withdraw from any of them at all, if you go down that road.
The server’s trustworthiness does not matter for Signal. The app is designed to work securely regardless of the server. Moreover, even if the server software is open source, you cannot be sure that they run the same code that they publish.
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What bothered me was that Signal fanbase was trashing Telegram for not publishing the server source, while Signal was doing this.