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Telegram Hands U.S. Authorities Data on Thousands of Users [404 Media]
(www.404media.co)
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this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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Technology
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I'm a fan of self-hosted Matrix server. You can get a dozen of bridges for those stubborn people that refuse to leave messenger/whatsapp/telegram (at a loss of encryption, and they still get your convos, but at least you don't have their spyware on your mobile and you can have everything in one app), while also being decentralized.
Self-hosting a server is actually really, really easy. It took me like half an hour, because there is an amazing Matrix Ansible Deploy script, that has a pretty easy to follow documentation, and is also one of those super-rare projects that just works. Even if I forgot to update my server for several months, I could literally "just update", and the script is clever enough to figure out what changed, tell me what I need to update in the config files (which are still only like four rows of stuff I needed to setup), and it is a really smooth experience. Even when you want to set up some bridges, for most it's literally just adding "_bridge_enabled: true" to the ansible yml config file. I've already set up Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord and Messenger this way, and it was effortless.
Impressive!
What is that?
What problem does it solve
Matrix is a new-ish decentralized, private, E2EE encryption protocol. It's pretty neat. It still has some issues (at least that I experience. Mainly the Android app is constantly being super slow to receive messages), but it's super promising.
They also have some goals to improve email infrastructure by integrating the matrix protocol, but not sure if that will go anywhere. I remember reading this off hand remark on their blog. Can't find the source.
As the original comment said, there's the concept ifa "bridge" which allows you to bridge other services to a matrix chat. So you could have a discord channel and matrix room bridged, as an example. A ready to go option with bridges is Beeper. But you can also setup your own stuff, as they said.
If I give my Discord chats to Beeper, and authorities subpoena Beeper, will the authorities get my Discord chats?
Theoretically no, all of your messages stored on Beeper servers are encrypted. But they will get all your metadata.
But I wouldn't worry about that anyway since Discord not only has access to all of your messages but sells them to companies to process for AI. So that'd be the far easier and faster route for them.
I feel like introducing another attack surface for a minimal gain inconvenience just isn't worth it. I'll be passing, thanks
If I'm honest, it's not convenient either. I stopped using it years ago because I kept getting logged out of my accounts and flagged for "automated activity". Plus they straight up lie about supporting SMS and RCS. The only "support" they have is connecting it to your Google account.
Yes they would. Thats why Beeper is working on changing to a bridge setup that works client-side and not server-side. Remember, that Discord is not encrypted and authorities can just get your data from discord directly. Do not use discord in any sort of private context whatsoever. I don't believe Discord itself isn't actively using my messaging data anyways