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Delete WhatsApp, use Signal Private Messenger instead
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Ranayna:
I don't know what news andy is referring to, but here in germany, any news regarding telegram is essentially bad news.
Noone talks about it's features or security, but every news piece talks about telegram being used by right wings, neonazis or conspiracy nutters.

I don't even want to suggest using Telegram anymore, since associations like this tend to stick and generally do not end well.
Halcyon:
Telegram is a child's toy compared to the likes of Signal (and far less popular in my experience).
tszaboo:
Well, I just read on the news that they've downloaded Signal 8.8 Million times in the last week, a huge surge in their user base. Good.
SVFeingold:

--- Quote from: voltsandjolts on January 11, 2021, 09:00:22 pm ---I always find 'blind faith' a curious phenomenon. I often catch myself at it, without even noticing.

--- End quote ---

No modern society can function without "blind faith." When is the last time you did an chemical assay of your tap water? And I don't mean sending it to a lab. No no no, they can hardly be trusted. No, you must replicate all of their methods and instruments from scratch - or find an open-source peer reviewed equivalent - and do it yourself. You'd be a fool not to do it.

Likewise when you buy a car, do you just assume that the airbag and seat belts work? Oh sure, they worked in the crash tests some years ago. But that was a different car. How do you know that yours work. Do you do your own verification? Buy a few sample cars and test them yourself? Do you do a complete X-ray CT and electrical test of the relevant modules yourself? Do you proof-test your own seatbelts using your own homebrew tensile tester? No? Ridiculous.

And I know I didn't just see you take an Ibuprofen right from the bottle (god knows where it's been!) you just picked up from Walgreens. Better do a full analysis of each bottle. Otherwise you're just begging to take a big pill of pure Cobalt-60 without even knowing. I mean, sure it's unlikely. But how do you know?

And on and on. I'm not really picking on you specifically, so please don't take it that way. But this general vibe is present in pretty much any thread about infosec. And this is how those people sound when they talk about how ignorant the unwashed public is to use reliable, commonplace encrypted message services such as iMessage and Facebook.

We rely on "blind faith" on practically a minute-by-minute basis to enjoy our modern lives. Crypto nerds ignore this and focus on how ignorant everyone else is for not keeping up with the history and release notes of obscure platforms because...they're crypto nerds. Turn the same scrutiny back onto them onto any of the many areas in which they are not experts and they are just as demonstrably ignorant as anyone else. How many crypto folks personally do a full function test of every single IC in the laptop they're using? After all, those boards are made in China...they could easily have snuck a hardware backdoor in there. I'm guessing "zero." There's that blind faith again.

Don't get me wrong: it's a good thing that crypto nerds do this! I love watching Defcon talks, and I'm forever grateful that those men and women are out there hacking shit and probing for security weaknesses. The work they do keeps these systems robust, keeps companies (semi)honest, and eventually trickles out into broader society for the benefit of everyone. I wouldn't have it any other way.

All the same it helps to have some humility and not act like you're viewing the rest of society through museum glas; some weird specimens that are too ignorant to *snort* understand that VSee hasn't released any technical white papers in 8 years! You're one of us too buddy, we're on the same side of the glass. :)
voltsandjolts:

--- Quote from: SVFeingold on January 13, 2021, 01:05:16 am ---This is vaguely reminiscent of the Linux fanboys being certain it's the "year of Linux" and they're finally gonna take down MS and Apple.

--- End quote ---
Just to get the facts clear; here you are talking about desktop computing. Everywhere else (mobile, datacentre, supercomputing, web servers, nas boxes, routers, embedded os) linux rules the roost.


--- Quote from: SVFeingold on January 13, 2021, 10:51:32 am ---No modern society can function without "blind faith." ...<snip> ..TLDR

--- End quote ---
Blind faith is belief in the abscence of any evidence. If you choose to live that way you can, but in general life can be better if you make smarter, more informed choices. Of course, I don't mean analyse your water and all source code you use. But you can take advice from others (this forum included), evidence from several independent sources and make a more informed choice. The probablility of maker better choices is much higher that way. Of course it takes a little effort, so blind faith suits some people better.
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