For years I have ignored warnings around Telegram being "unencrypted". Though, for unknown reasons, they first banned my account and then recently, "restricted" my account. Yesterday, I had a private chat with someone and based on specific keywords, Telegram suddenly "restricted" my account. While not explicitly "censorship" (or even remotely illegal), Telegram is likely doing scanning in private chats. This was a red line and I quit the platform.
by Tiberium on 11/8/24, 3:09 AM
Private chats aren't E2E. But anyhow, why do you think you were restricted based on specific keywords? And how does that restriction look like? Can you please check your access with @SpamBot ? Because in Telegram, if you PM someone, they have a big red button that'll block you and report you for spam - and Telegram often temporarily restricts accounts for reported unsolicited PMs.
Oh, and the title is misleading, there's no such thing done on the client side for sure.
by nixosbestos on 11/8/24, 1:17 AM
> For years I have ignored warnings around Telegram being "unencrypted"
Guess what the people reading this thread, using Telegram, are going to do.
by jkmartindale on 11/8/24, 1:21 AM
I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but late July/early August 2023 there were rumors in certain circles regarding a potential Telegram session takeover exploit or some other scary weirdness. It ended up being a keyword (or probably URL) that was on Telegram's blocklist. Sending it to someone in a private chat resulted in account restrictions or session terminations, iirc.
Seems like instead of having a functioning moderation team, Telegram uses extremely lazy automation and hopes nobody will care.
by ipaddr on 11/8/24, 1:10 AM
by ac130kz on 11/8/24, 3:07 AM
I have to flag the post:
1) It is encrypted, if you initiate an encrypted chat, which is not the default.
2) The clients are open source, you can even write your own TUI around the API.
by quyleanh on 11/8/24, 2:01 AM
Talking to "unencrypted", may I ask, by default, for normal chat, all the text, image, video, sticker is uploaded to Telegram server without encryption? Or they are encrypted/hashed/salted but the decryption key is on Telegram side?
by myself248 on 11/8/24, 1:59 AM
Can you share some words that might trigger it, without doxing yourself? I have a Telegram account IDGAF about and it'd be entertaining to see if it gets zorched.
by mingus88 on 11/8/24, 1:57 AM
What were the keywords?
by int_19h on 11/8/24, 1:12 AM
Telegram is encrypted if you tell it to be. Did you?
by 486sx33 on 11/8/24, 2:25 AM