- A company owned by a Russian network engineer named Viktor Vedeneev controls thousands of Telegram IP addresses and maintains its servers.
- Vedeneev’s other companies have a history of collaborating with Russia’s defense sector, the FSB security service, and other highly sensitive agencies.
- Because of the way Telegram’s encryption protocols work, even users who use its “end-to-end” encryption features are vulnerable to being tracked by anyone who can monitor its network traffic.
Look, in today’s world, you get to choose who spies on you depending on your chosen platform, but spy on you they absolutely will. Wether it’s the Russians, the Chinese or USA. The only way to not get spied on is to not use electronic communications at all.
Okay, who spies on me when I use e.g. Signal?
The recipient of your messages.
that’s not just useless defeatism, but also false. effective end to end encryption exists in multiple forms today.
signal, maybe even with a custom server.
matrix if the server is being ran on trusted hardware.
XMPP too with the right extensions.
Look, in today’s world the entire banking sector relies on private communications to operate using the Internet. Why can’t private citizens get the same?
End-to-end encryption should cover you, but anything that can set up man-in-the-middle attacks is poised to defeat that.
fully audited FOSS E2EE ftw