#Telegram is being temporarily blocked in Spain. Will this trigger an uptick in #Signal account registration?
"Spain's High Court has ordered the suspension of messaging app Telegram's services in the country after media companies complained it was allowing users to upload their content without permission"
#CyberSecurity#Surveillance#Encryption#Messaging: "The current crop of suggestions seem to concede that governments shouldn’t have direct access. Instead, they want services to backdoor themselves and act as gatekeepers to law enforcement. That’s not an improvement; it’s still centralized, and it makes these companies responsible for any misuse of the data that they have access to, requiring everyone on the planet to trust a few big tech companies with our private and most intimate conversations – hardly a direction that society wants to go in in 2024. ‘Trust me, I’m in charge’ is a poor model of governance or security.
These ‘solutions’ also ignore the reality that the ‘bad guys’ will just use other tools to communicate; information is information. That will leave law abiding people giving up their privacy and security for little societal gain." https://www.mnot.net/blog/2024/04/29/power
At what point are the #Democrats going to start engaging in coordinated #messaging, and pushing content to combat the flood of #rightwing bullshit? The clock is ticking, and we can't afford to wait til the night before the election to suddenly realize that effort is needed to inform the voters of the facts.
#CyberSecurity#Privacy#Messaging#Metadata#Encryption: "When stored, aggregated and analyzed, this metadata provides ample information that could potentially incriminate someone or be submitted to authorities. When WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger enabled end-to-end encryption for messages, of course it was a welcome and widely celebrated change. But it’s important to remember that not all end-to-end encryption utilizes the same standards, some implementations are more secure than others, so it’s something that shouldn’t necessarily be accepted at face value. More importantly: collecting and storing an obscene amount of metadata should invite global scrutiny, considering this data is often combined with whatever other information companies like Meta harvest about your identity (which is a lot.)
This is one of the many reasons why we need to resist giving out our phone numbers just to access an app, especially to do something as personal and intimate as private messaging. Even though users can sometimes mask their numbers with a username, their identity on the app is still fundamentally tied to their phone number. App operators have access to this, as well as user contacts. Additionally, with a simple modification to the app's source code, the contacts may also gain access in some cases. This should raise more concerns about privacy, and it makes the need for anonymity difficult to achieve." https://simplex.chat/blog/20240416-dangers-of-metadata-in-messengers.html
#1 way you know your org is using @matrix for communication: the ratio of content-bearing messages to "could you please discard your session?" messages is significantly < 1:0. #matrix#messaging#chat
#Cybersecurity#Telegram#Messaging#Geolocation: "A recently launched tool allows anyone to search a specific set of coordinates for Telegram users that have a certain setting enabled, and then plot their approximate physical location on a map, according to 404 Media’s own tests. The tool, dubbed “Close-Circuit Telegram Vision” or CCTV, piggybacks off an intended feature of Telegram called “Find People Nearby” which is disabled by default. The typical purpose of that feature is to find other Telegram users nearby to the current user’s physical location. The new tool, meanwhile, lets anyone search globally for people who have the setting turned on.
The news presents a recontextualization of data which users may consent to being available in one context, but which is now being presented in another.
“They have a protection mechanism but it's not enough to protect,” Ivan Glinkin, a cybersecurity professional and creator of CCTV, said in an online chat."
Android's #satellite#messaging support has been in the works for about a year now, and it sounds like #Android 15 is going to launch the feature for apps.
The new OS is including notifications and better status bar indicators for when you're connected to space.
A "NonTerrestrialNetwork" API will let apps know when they're limited to barely there satellite connectivity.
Google says Android 15 will let third-party SMS and MMS applications tap into the satellite connectivity APIs,
but enhanced messaging with RCS support will be limited to "preloaded" applications only.
I published a couple of Instagram stories recently, and now that I got a foot there, my friends are starting to send me Instagram Direct messages. Yet another #messaging app…
To keep up with all the channels, I regularly use #Beeper, mainly on desktop. But I just learnt that their #Android app has been rebuilt from scratch, and it looks really neat!
If you want to try, just ask and I'll share my invite code.
#SocialMedia#Messaging#Telegram#Privacy#CyberSecurity: "Taking the company public would change the power structure and force greater disclosure, although Durov could maintain voting control by issuing dual class shares.
Monetising messaging apps is not easy. Users do not want adverts to pop up in their private messages. Signal relies on donations and Meta does not give profit figures for WhatsApp.
Telegram is not yet profitable. It told the FT that it makes “hundreds of millions of dollars” in annual revenue via digital ads, crypto payments and premium subscriptions. It is planning an AI-powered chatbot, but then who is not? Server costs are large. Durov described costs as less than 70 cents per user, which translates to around $630mn a year. Revenue is below that.
Selling tokens linked to its own blockchain effort could have funded the endeavour but it was shot down by regulators. However, Telegram still facilitates use of the tokens, called Toncoins, after developers took on the project. Toncoin’s price has climbed about 60 per cent in the past year. Talk of a possible IPO is proving lucrative in more ways than one."
After a long hesitation I finally installed #Signal. Along with Fb Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, Google Messages… it is yet another #messaging app on which I have to make myself available. For only a dozen of contacts listed, I still wonder if it is worth it.
Since DMs suck on here and @signalapp added usernames, is anyone just publicly sharing their Signal username? I’ve thought about doing that but am not sure. #SignalApp#messaging