FA+
Shop
Why I won't use Telegram (please stop asking me to sign up)
9 years ago
First and foremost, if you use Telegram, then great - I won't stop you, and I won't try to talk you out of using it. I am making this journal because I am getting more and more requests from friends to use it, and with FC coming up I can anticipate getting many more requests to sign up.
There are many, many reasons I won't use Telegram - enough that I could write a good-sized essay at this point, with references and sources and all - but, if I were to sum it all up in one sentence, it would be this:
Telegram scares the shit out of me.
(Now, to clarify - I actually did end up trying it out. In fact, I tried it for a week before I said, "Fuck this," and deleted my account... and that was BEFORE I learned what I now know about it.)
EDIT: I just thought of a better way to explain things.
Telegram is owned and founded by the brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov. According to them, your desire to have privacy from other people - to not be stalked or harassed, to be left alone, to not have your life on public display - is solely the result of a brainwashing campaign by Google and Facebook.
I kid you not. This information is in the FAQ on Telegram's website.
The Durov Brothers have complete and total control over the company, a company that has ZERO oversight and ZERO controls - since it's completely funded out of Pavel's gigantic pile of cash, it doesn't even have to answer to market pressures, or to having to turn a profit.
THAT is what is terrifying: The thought that two individuals - individuals with an erratic political history and a penchant for conspiracy theories - have so much control over the lives of 100 million users, and there is absolutely nothing preventing them from doing whatever they want with those lives.
There are many, many reasons I won't use Telegram - enough that I could write a good-sized essay at this point, with references and sources and all - but, if I were to sum it all up in one sentence, it would be this:
Telegram scares the shit out of me.
(Now, to clarify - I actually did end up trying it out. In fact, I tried it for a week before I said, "Fuck this," and deleted my account... and that was BEFORE I learned what I now know about it.)
EDIT: I just thought of a better way to explain things.
Telegram is owned and founded by the brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov. According to them, your desire to have privacy from other people - to not be stalked or harassed, to be left alone, to not have your life on public display - is solely the result of a brainwashing campaign by Google and Facebook.
I kid you not. This information is in the FAQ on Telegram's website.
The Durov Brothers have complete and total control over the company, a company that has ZERO oversight and ZERO controls - since it's completely funded out of Pavel's gigantic pile of cash, it doesn't even have to answer to market pressures, or to having to turn a profit.
THAT is what is terrifying: The thought that two individuals - individuals with an erratic political history and a penchant for conspiracy theories - have so much control over the lives of 100 million users, and there is absolutely nothing preventing them from doing whatever they want with those lives.
THEN you factor in following:
* Telegram has 100 million monthly users, and thanks to the requirement of having an actual, non-VoIP phone number in order to sign up for it, those are all pretty much guaranteed to be actual human beings.
* Telegram has made this statement: "Telegram no longer supports VoIP numbers (e.g. Google Voice) because SMS delivery to virtual numbers is not reliable." This is bullshit, to be frank, and the only reasons to lie about this are ones that make my skin crawl.
* If you sign up for Telegram, the service automatically notifies all of your contacts who also have Telegram that you've signed up. This means that if you try to stop using the service, you have to face pressure from everyone to sign back up for it. It's realllllly hard to stop using it.
* Speaking of contacts, good luck separating business and personal contacts, because you can't - everything is tied to your phone number. One profile.
* Oh, also - when you're using the service, anyone who has your phone number can see exactly how long it's been since you've last been online. You can't prevent this. The most you can do is make the time range fuzzy, and even THAT isn't a default setting and requires a ton of hassle and whitelisting to manage.
* Anyone you have listed as a contact can see your phone number. That means all of those people you've e-mailed from Gmail or whatever who get listed as contacts... can see your phone number. I experienced this one myself, when I was able to see the phone number of a friend who never gave it to me.
* If, due to the last couple of points, you end up getting creepy stalkers... well, if you ever change your phone number, everyone in your contact list is notified automatically of the new number.
* Telegram doesn't use passwords, and instead relies just on SMS verification. Let me quote Telegram's FAQ for this one: "But please remember that we cannot protect you from your own mother if she takes your unlocked phone without a passcode. Or from your IT-department if they access your computer at work. Or from any other people that get physical or root access to your phones or computers running Telegram".
* You CAN get a passcode, but it only protects your cloud chats, and you have to specifically remember to enable it after signing up.
* The company keeps misrepresenting information about security. For example, it insists that logging in with an SMS code is the industry standard, but that's not true - 2FA with an SMS code is the standard.
* In fact, Telegram says it has "2-Step Verification" and tries to pass that off as 2-Factor Authentication, even though it VERY MUCH ISN'T
... I could go on and on still. These are just some of the facts, I haven't even included some of the conclusions I've drawn from this data.