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Privacy (collected references)
IainB:
Extracted notes from the Telegram FAQ:
(Copied from: Telegram F.A.Q. - <https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-you-going-to-make-money-out-of-this>)
Q: What are your thoughts on internet privacy?
Big internet companies like Facebook or Google have effectively hijacked the privacy discourse in the recent years. Their marketers managed to convince the public that the most important things about privacy are superficial tools that allow hiding your public posts or your profile pictures from the people around you. Adding these superficial tools enables companies to calm down the public and change nothing in how they are turning over private data to marketers and other third parties.
At Telegram we think that the two most important components of Internet privacy should be instead:
Protecting your private conversations from snooping third parties, such as officials, employers, etc.
Protecting your personal data from third parties, such as marketers, advertisers, etc.
This is what everybody should care about, and these are some of our top priorities. Telegram's aim is to create a truly free messenger, without the usual caveats. This means that instead of diverting public attention with low-impact settings, we can afford to focus on the real privacy issues that exist in the modern world.
--- End quote ---
Q: What about GDPR?
New regulations regarding data privacy called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force in Europe on May 25, 2018. Since taking back our right to privacy was the reason we made Telegram, there wasn‘t much we had to change. We don’t use your data for ad targeting, we don’t sell it to others, and we’re not part of any mafia family “family of companies.”
Telegram only keeps the information it needs to function as a feature-rich cloud service — for example, your cloud chats so that you can access them from any devices without using third-party backups, or your contacts so that you can rely on your existing social graph when messaging people on Telegram.
We're still working with our lawyers on an update to the Telegram Privacy Policy that will lay this out in even more detail (don‘t expect any dramatic changes there though). We’ll notify you when it's ready.
For now, please feel free to use our new @GDPRbot to:
* Request a copy of all your data that Telegram stores.
* Contact Telegram's Data Protection Officer.Android users got a GDPR update with version 4.8.9 which allows more control over synced contacts and adds other privacy settings. On June, 1, Apple approved Telegram v.4.8.2 for iOS with these features.
--- End quote ---
Q: There's illegal content on Telegram. How do I take it down?
All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants. We do not process any requests related to them. ...
--- End quote ---
Q: A bot or channel is infringing on my copyright. What do I do?
All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants. We do not process any requests related to them. ...
--- End quote ---
f0dder:
Please don't think a VPN is going to give you any form of privacy.
A VPN lets you access a remote network securely across an insecure line - this is the only thing it's guaranteed to do. It's the only thing you should be using it for. Stop spreading the damn misconception that it's useful for privacy.
If you want to watch Netflix content from a different region, fine, VPN will let you do that, but morally you might was as well then be torrenting the content.
If you're doing something shady and want to hide your tracks, a VPN is not what you want. Not even one of the paid ones. Not even one of the "WE DON'T LOG ANYTHING AND WE VALUE YOUR PRIVACY". Stop it. There's a few threat models where a VPN can be a viable solution, but for those you should be running it yourself on a cloud instance somewhere. If you don't know how to do that, or think it's too much bother, you shouldn't be doing something shady in the first place - or you're not doing something that warrants that use of VPN, and should just not be doing it.
And stay entirely away from the ones that don't require payment, the market is shady as fuck and they've been doing all sorts of nasty stuff.
Deozaan:
Please don't think a VPN is going to give you any form of privacy.
A VPN lets you access a remote network securely across an insecure line - this is the only thing it's guaranteed to do. It's the only thing you should be using it for. Stop spreading the damn misconception that it's useful for privacy.
-f0dder (July 24, 2018, 11:04 AM)
--- End quote ---
Doesn't it help prevent tracking? Or has that become so invasive these days that it doesn't matter what your IP is, they can still identify you by some unique ID in your browser or OS or something?
f0dder:
Doesn't it help prevent tracking?-Deozaan (July 24, 2018, 02:10 PM)
--- End quote ---
Not really, no. You have to consider that most people aren't on static global IPs, but will either have dynamic IPs, or even (a very large number) be behind cgnat. The tracking folks obviously want to be able to uniquely identify you even in spite of that, and across devices as well.
Trying to use VPN against that is absolutely useless.
You can avoid some of it if you use a combination of uMatrix (in whitelisting mode), conservative use of noscript, a decent adblocker like uBlock Origin, adding in HTTP Referer header control and Firefox Multi-Account Containers. But it's still not a 100% guarantee and it's a fair amount of work getting some sites to work the first time you visit them.
IainB:
Looks like the Ugandan government could be in the vanguard when it comes to, uh, privacy...
...Uganda orders ISPs to block Ugandans from accessing Pornographic Websites Nice one! :Thmbsup:
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