Telegram Hits 2B Messages Sent Daily

by reddotX • 11 years ago

103 104 11 years ago

It's a little frustrating to see that the most secure (yet still usable) alternatives aren't the most popular (perhaps with the exception of iMessage, although 95% of the security of those messages is compromised anyway by the backup system that's enabled by default).

I like to tell myself that this is because the really good open source options don't have enough money or clout to make themselves popular, while apps like Whatsapp or Skype or Telegram do. It's just unfortunate that the least secure apps and services get pushed to the mainstream simply because of money.

robmcm• 11 years ago

Why not promote them here? What are the "the really good open source options"?

darklajid11• 11 years ago

I think the consensus here is that TextSecure (and whatever the iOS client is called) is the Right Thing.

Personally, I'm doing a last effort to use xmpp right now (just in the process to migrate to the unreleased prosody 0.10 for some features that I require) and otherwise Telegram looks like the 'sanest' option so far.

Doesn't require a phone number as identifier

Clients for ~all~ platforms that I care about

cynic_• 11 years ago

What's wrong with Telegram?

lloeki• 11 years ago

Back in the day, one of the main arguments were that they're "rolling their own crypto", although I don't know how it stands today[0].

[0] https://core.telegram.org/techfaq#q-why-did-you-go-for-a-cus...

darklajid11• 11 years ago

Arguments as far as I'm aware (please correct me where I'm wrong):

- Crypto is 'home made' and - in spite of their crypto-challenges (or, as another school of thought states, related to the fact of trying to use these challenges to appear 'secure') unproven

- End to end encryption isn't the default

Nursie7• 11 years ago

> What's wrong with Telegram?

"Hey look! We invented this novel cryptosystem and, despite it being unproven and not having it validated by anyone, we reckon it's the most secure thing ever!"

m52go• 11 years ago

Telegram is not governed by VCs or large corporations with ambiguous ties to government. Its code is open-source. It hasn't needed to spend money to make itself popular...its users did it for them.

Which you could really say about all the services you mentioned.

The difference is in who's footing the bill for all the other costs.

The founder of Telegram is a privacy and civil liberties activist who has publicly committed to keeping Telegram as secure as possible, and that until a revenue model is determined that honors that standard, he'll continue funding it on his own (he's loaded from equity in VKontakte).

What else are you looking for?

castratikron• 11 years ago

Just thought I would mention that only the client is libre; the server is still closed.

maxerickson2• 11 years ago

The default protocol is share everything with the server:

https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-secure-is-telegram

That is clearly prioritizing user convenience over "as secure as possible".

Nursie7• 11 years ago

What's the popularity of 'WhatsApp' like at the moment?

IIRC the folks at Open Whisper Systems (TextSecure, Redphone and Signal) did some work with them to integrate the TextSecure protocol into that.

So while I use TextSecure with friends who are happy to use that, I'm not upset about using WhatsApp with others as it's more mainstream and friendly, but has decent security under the hood.

darklajid11• 11 years ago

As far as I'm aware:

- Your WhatsApp messages don't use that 'security' by default (or do they?)

- That thing isn't open source and they could rip or swap out any encryption support they offer

higherpurpose2• 11 years ago

800 million users:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/04/17/whatsapp-hits-800000-...

I haven't heard the final word on that. For all we know Facebook could pull the plug on the "in-development E2E encryption" in the next few months and act like nothing changed. Whatsapp has never made a public statement about it so you can't trust that it uses "decent security under the hood" right now.

When they make a public statement about rolling out E2E encryption to all of its clients and change their Privacy Policy to reflect that change (since they aren't supposed to "get your data" with E2E encryption anymore - therefore if the Privacy Policy doesn't reflect it, that means they aren't using E2E encryption) then we can at least have a reasonable expectation of them committing to it (even if in theory they could still bypass it and we would never know, because it's a closed source app, but at least if we do find out about it, we can hold them to it - right now we can't hold them to anything because they've never said anything about the E2E encryption themselves).

collyw• 11 years ago

I think a lot of it is timing and momentum. I just bought an Ubuntu phone only to discover there is no whatsapp on it. I am happy to use Telegram, but convincing friends is an uphill battle.

mahouse• 11 years ago

WhatsApp was first, that's all

jszymborski3• 11 years ago

It 100% isn't about popularity, it's about usability.

I tried to get my friends on Tox, but ultimately had to get them on Telegram because it was the only app that was truly 100% cross-platform.

aet• 11 years ago

Text messaging is cross platform

e12e8• 11 years ago

Yeah, because xmpp doesn't exist.

planetjones• 11 years ago

My dad is still an "avid" Blackberry user (as much as anyone who uses a blackberry these days is avid) and I note Telegram does not have a Blackberry client. Until that changes, we're still on whatsapp.

EDIT: I want a polished official product, not something put together in a hackathon: https://telegram.org/blog/bb-results

skrowl2• 11 years ago

Telegram is great. I've got all of my friends upgraded from WhatsApp (and SMS) and we haven't looked back.

yfkar• 11 years ago

I switched to Telegram with my fiancée because of troubles with migrating WhatsApp data when she bought a new phone. When we powered up the new phone we realized that WhatsApp message history hadn't been transferred in the device migration (Windows Phone here) and there was some data that we wanted to preserve. WhatsApp on the old phone stopped working because the account had been used on the new phone so we couldn't even look at the chat history without using the SIM card to reactivate it. Reactivating WhatsApp on the old phone involved some extra hassle because the two phones had different SIM card slot sizes. After reactivation we could look at the old messages before moving the SIM card back to the new phone but couldn't transfer them, since WhatsApp chat history transfer on WP requires that both phones have an SD card slot. Being pretty fed up with WhatsApp at that point I found Telegram and have used it ever since.

levifig• 11 years ago

I've been trying to get friends and family to switch to Telegram from iMessage and WhatsApp. Their native apps are great platform, speed is awesome, and, above all, it's a platform-agnostic system. I highly recommend it.

giarc• 11 years ago

This is a huge hurdle in my opinion. Most of my friends own an iPhone and since I also own one, we group message on iMessage. If I wanted to switch to an Android, I would have to either convince them to switch to WhatsApp, Telegram etc etc or stop being part of that group chat, I think they call this FOMO. So having a bunch of friends with an iPhone that I regularly communicate with is a big pressure to continue buying Apple products.

minot2• 11 years ago

Isn't WhatsApp more secure than telegram now that it implements the textsecure protocol? I guess the biggest hurdle with whatsapp now is what to do when the public key for a user changes...

nicois• 11 years ago

I wonder whether telegram could offer a bridge service to proxy WhatsApp accounts, meaning you could switch to WhatsApp without losing any contacts... Alternatively, perhaps the API can be glued to WhatsApp somehow.

wahsd• 11 years ago

So how secure is Telegram?

hurin2• 11 years ago

As far as I understand, not encrypted by default, and not very secure even when encrypted:

http://www.alexrad.me/discourse/a-264-attack-on-telegram-and...

dabeeeenster• 11 years ago

Not encrypted by default? Really?

ilitirit• 11 years ago

The last time I read about Telegram people on HN were upset about it's security competition or something like that. IIRC, the gist of it was akin to this:

T: "Our security system is so secure that we'll give you a prize if you manage to break in through the front door"

HN: "But real criminals won't necessarily use the front door. What about other potential points of entry?"

T: "We won't confirm or deny the existence of any other point of entry, and to be clear, the competition is strictly about the security that our front door provides"

Is this still the case?

nomel• 11 years ago

Http://unhandledexpression.com/2013/12/17/telegram-stand-back-we-know-maths/

stevenleeg• 11 years ago

Telegram is fantastic with the glaring exception of mandatory read receipts.

Am I the only one that can't stand having people know when I've read their messages? It seems like every major chat platform (except for iMessage) has read receipts enabled without any option to disable them. Why has this become so popular?

discreditable• 11 years ago

Why has this become so popular?

It settles the age old question of "Hey, did you get my message?". Many people like this functionality.

Ntrails• 11 years ago

I'm more than happy to show "delivered reciepts" since that covers the question of whether the message arrived.

I prefer to be able to read and reply later if I want to without feeling guilty that it'll look like I just couldn't be bothered. I mean, it's true, I couldn't be bothered, I just don't want to broadcast that fact :p

teahat• 11 years ago

Almost certainly because it increases engagement. By optimizing purely on metrics, psychologically undesirable effects creep in (guilt, in this case). c.f. online gaming apps and their addiction inducing behaviour.

XJOKOLAT• 11 years ago

Also, it seems to be missing an obvious way to export your message history? Am I missing something or does anyone know if this is on the todo list?

Having said that I really like it and am encouraging my group to switch to test it out.

I wonder how effective that will be: "The Inertia ... the inertia" (said in full-on Marlon Brando Apocalypse Now voice)

mkr-hn• 11 years ago

Everyone I talk to on Telegram understands I might read their message at one moment and respond later (or not at all). It's not an issue for me.

4k• 11 years ago

I am really happy to see Telegram growing. I am one of those people who deleted Whatsapp (and lost touch with 30-40 people and several groups) when Facebook bought it.

So far I have been happy with it, even though only like 5 of my friends use it. Yeah, it may (or may not) have security flaws like many on HN complain, but I would take it anyday over FB owned give-us-all-your-data product.

lucb1e4• 11 years ago

Same here, except the people I wanted to communicate with are either the same or kind enough to install it also. If they don't care about WhatsApp already why should they care about installing Telegram next to it? Doesn't make a difference (to them anyway).

Rainymood• 11 years ago

Why did you delete Whatsapp?

lucb1e4• 11 years ago

Not the person you're asking, but for me personally I never wanted it. I installed it because a group in school wanted to kick me from the project because I'm "unreachable" (which meant I had no WhatsApp -- email, telegram, IRC, sms, calling, anything would have worked, but no WhatsApp was a reason to make me fail my year). I was sad that I couldn't uninstall it before Facebook bought it.

mcagl• 11 years ago

I deleted it when this happened: https://4d43.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/whatsapp-and-facebook-...

spacefight• 11 years ago

Threema FTW.

lucb1e4• 11 years ago

Why?

darklajid11• 11 years ago

Why is another closed source/paid product better than this one?

I'm okay with a price for something that I might use every day, but if I'm accepting closed source solutions - what's the benefit of Threema here?

mrmister12• 11 years ago

Telegram is as good as closed source too. Look more into what they've actually open sourced...

subliminalpanda2• 11 years ago

I actually like Threema. But convincing others to pay $2 when whatsapp is free is a tough sell.

mrmister12• 11 years ago

They market themselves as open source but as far as I can tell none of their server side code is available.

And if you want to build an app using the telegram system it's basically using their cloud servers.

Does anyone know what their tech stack is?

beckler• 11 years ago

Where does it say open source? I see where it says they have an open API and protocol, but nothing about source code.

darklajid11• 11 years ago

https://telegram.org/faq#q-why-not-open-source-everything

leni536• 11 years ago

I wonder why isn't there a "text messaging mobile app" out there which just uses openPGP signed and encrypted email as the backend. Email is not that far from text messaging anyway.

otibom• 11 years ago

I believe the reason is that exchanging public keys is, unfortunatly, to much work for the average user.

uph• 11 years ago

The answer is forward secrecy.

If an attacker were to record all of a target’s ciphertext traffic over some extended period of time, and then compromise that one key at any point in the future (perhaps by seizing the device it’s on), they would have the ability to decrypt all of the previously recorded ciphertext traffic belonging to the target.

https://whispersystems.org/blog/asynchronous-security/

pdevr• 11 years ago

The link here says that WhatsApp hit 800 million users last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9538717

Telegram hit 1 billion messages in December 2014, and had 50 million active users at that time[1].

So, is it reasonable to assume that WhatsApp sends around 16 billion messages every day?

[1] https://telegram.org/blog/billion

dorfsmay2• 11 years ago

It's multiplatform, but, you have to have a phone number to be able to get an account, right?

SliderUp• 11 years ago

True.

dorfsmay2• 11 years ago

Weird for a service that wants to be universal and independent...

iloveluce• 11 years ago

"Telegram is free forever. No ads. No subscription fees."

How is that sustainable?

Freeboots• 11 years ago

+1, 2b messages is not cheap, where is their revenue if not from subscribers or from selling data?

My only guess is that they are planning to charge for their api when they hit scale.

Aoyagi2• 11 years ago

https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-you-going-to-make-money-o...

Telegram Hits 2B Messages Sent Daily

Related Stories