Not really, there are plenty of free things that don't make you the product.
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Question of the Day: Which South African brand or product do you wish would make a return?
Will you stick with Whatsapp?
- Thread starter bwana
- Start date
Not really, there are plenty of free things that don't make you the product.
newby_investor
Executive Member
Signal is run by a privacy-focused non-profit organisation and relies on donations.
AfricanTech
Honorary Master
Don't use FB so no issue
SauRoNZA
Honorary Master
Huh? It’s just a box you tick off.
And it makes a lot of sense as the new kid on the block to inform people and hence facilitate a soft migration.
Immediately new users feel welcome and automatically start using it.
SauRoNZA
Honorary Master
Everything is encrypted, I wish people could understand that client-to-client and client-to-server-to-client is all still encryption.
And the reason it’s like that is for those very features that sets it apart.
Also, where do you get to it being an advertising company? It’s a not-for-profit effort that will make use of ads to pay its operational costs in the future.
That doesn’t make it an advertising company.
Pavel Durov
As Telegram approaches 500 million active users, many of you are asking the question – who is going to pay to support this growth? After all, more users mean more expenses for traffic and servers. A project of our size needs at least a few hundred million dollars per year to keep going. For...
t.me
SauRoNZA
Honorary Master
Ummm....??
No, that just disables the push notification. A chat is still created every single time a contact joins. The only way to stop it is to prevent Telegram from accessing your contacts.
Some say this (they don't care that their info is stolen) some say that (they do not want their info stolen) but I, for one, have already moved across to Telegram as have a number of my contacts. From what I have been reading there are millions who have already made the (dare I say) upgrade...but each to their own...
SauRoNZA
Honorary Master
Aaah right. Makes sense.
newby_investor
Executive Member
I'm not sure what those terms mean, I've not seen them used before. Data is encrypted in transit of course, but that's industry standard these days.
But unless you turn on the "secret chat" feature, the chats are not end-to-end encrypted. And group chats are never end-to-and encrypted. So sure, if your traffic is intercepted by your ISP then it's safe, it's an SSL connection from you to Telegram HQ, but Telegram HQ can read the content of your group chats if they want.
Encrypting group chats properly is hard, and once the group gets large, you'll take a real performance hit if you want to keep it encrypted. Signal explains it here:
Private Group Messaging
One of the major features we introduced in the TextSecure v2 release was private group chat. We believe that group chat is an important feature for encrypted communications projects, so we wanted to try to summarize some of the existing work in this area, as well as how TextSecure’s group chat pr...
signal.org
The fact that Telegram groups can get so large sets it apart I guess, but then you must understand that it comes at the expense of E2EE.
This lack of E2EE plus the "feature" of storing your messages on their servers (unlike WhatsApp or Signal which store only long enough to deliver the message) has led to Telegram being the subject of a number of hacks where user data and messages were exposed. So their record is a bit patchy as far as security is concerned...
Edit: I went and read through Telegram's own documentation, and ok, I now realise a bit more what you meant. They store their "cloud messages" encrypted, but they also have the keys to decrypt them. Ok, they are on a different server in a different jurisdiction, so that makes it a bit more secure against random hacks or state data demands, but it still gives Telegram themselves the ability to read your conversations if they wanted to.
Durov writes about how their system is better than the E2EE choice made by Whatsapp / Signal. His points make sense. If you agree with his reasoning, then Telegram might be suitable for you. I personally disagree, but that's just me.
Yeah ok that's fair, I went and did some reading and I learn now that while Durov also founded VK, it was sold to mail.ru before Telegram was started, so there's no link between the two. I was under the impression that a similar link exists as between WhatsApp and Facebook currently. In that I was mistaken.
Still, while Durov claims that Telegram is not-for-profit... it's incorporated as a normal LLC, and not an NPO as say the Signal Foundation is. Which makes me more than a little bit suspicious.
Last edited:
CrescentMoon
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Information privacy is like having a cube, and allowing some company to pick it up. Totally harmless right ? As far as we thought, they're only using it for squat exercises. How ever because we let them pick it up, they can also hit us over the head with it.
Tailored ads - Why aren't tailored ads a problem ? people all say they just skip it, even though some applications are littered with annoying ads, we bare with them. But if ads didn't work, there wouldn't be a massive market surrounding it, which means these ads are causing people to spend more, to click on them.
On the bright side, I don't mind searching for a plumber on google and finding a relevant ad.
The thing is, we've been giving information out for years. There's generic information, which can be collected by 1 person and that information when processed will work on 100 people. They can also use the information for finding trends, population of millions of different statistics, it makes a lot of things impersonal.
I believe XB and PS has the permission of its players to process player chat messages, and these companies can look for keywords to populate profiles - "i am a lizard" will populate your race tab, and show you bloodworms the next time you're browsing a site with third party code on it. Or show you certain news because you joked about being a democrat. How ever the data shows you're not american so it shows you a different spectrum of that information.
Not sure if it was steve jobs or who ever, but they did mention that in this age, programming should be known by all individuals as they know their first and second languages. One case where this is applicable is when as someone joked earlier there's only one road to las vegas, even though it's vulture ridden and fuel is short. With coding you create a new road.
When you put identification aside, that being what classifies an individual and data collection of the sort you're left with what many believe to be non-invasive use of information. Microsoft may use a heat map on whatsapp to find out which part of the app people use the most, what's used the least, and then make the least used areas of the app fancier to draw more attention and usage from its consumers. Creating a game that causes us to spend more time with what before was unimportant.
I do wonder though, for a messenger app, exactly what information does Microsoft collect, and how is it used ? With whatsapp you literally only populate a few fields of data.. username, status message, profile image, anything else ? They could probably collect usage times, generate network maps which shows them which numbers are connected to which other numbers and level these, Say you've a few thousand people, they don't all know bob, but on a second or third connection they may. Microsoft realizes that if they show bob that new iphone ad and he purchases one the other connections may follow even though bob only knows some of them. It's a probability factor. Microsoft could on a bad case scenario have a leak and those maps reach russian hackers who now have maps of connected numbers, after a bit of research they figure these maps can show them which contacts are connected to which businesses, and social engineer their way into company funds.
Finally we're able to predict the weather to a point, as such by collecting user data and letting people who are employed to make something of this data - companies gain control over their users, and not just their users as said before here is information that can be used generically that works with a lot more people, and this control over a period of time works like predicting the weather. We can't change the weather, but tailored ads, keywords, relations and so forth can be used to profit by predicting peoples actions.
Perhaps I should title this the data cold war. It's all behind the scenes but it's happening, where in a real war where whatsapps' the dominant mobile social network road to vegas..
Tailored ads - Why aren't tailored ads a problem ? people all say they just skip it, even though some applications are littered with annoying ads, we bare with them. But if ads didn't work, there wouldn't be a massive market surrounding it, which means these ads are causing people to spend more, to click on them.
On the bright side, I don't mind searching for a plumber on google and finding a relevant ad.
The thing is, we've been giving information out for years. There's generic information, which can be collected by 1 person and that information when processed will work on 100 people. They can also use the information for finding trends, population of millions of different statistics, it makes a lot of things impersonal.
I believe XB and PS has the permission of its players to process player chat messages, and these companies can look for keywords to populate profiles - "i am a lizard" will populate your race tab, and show you bloodworms the next time you're browsing a site with third party code on it. Or show you certain news because you joked about being a democrat. How ever the data shows you're not american so it shows you a different spectrum of that information.
Not sure if it was steve jobs or who ever, but they did mention that in this age, programming should be known by all individuals as they know their first and second languages. One case where this is applicable is when as someone joked earlier there's only one road to las vegas, even though it's vulture ridden and fuel is short. With coding you create a new road.
When you put identification aside, that being what classifies an individual and data collection of the sort you're left with what many believe to be non-invasive use of information. Microsoft may use a heat map on whatsapp to find out which part of the app people use the most, what's used the least, and then make the least used areas of the app fancier to draw more attention and usage from its consumers. Creating a game that causes us to spend more time with what before was unimportant.
I do wonder though, for a messenger app, exactly what information does Microsoft collect, and how is it used ? With whatsapp you literally only populate a few fields of data.. username, status message, profile image, anything else ? They could probably collect usage times, generate network maps which shows them which numbers are connected to which other numbers and level these, Say you've a few thousand people, they don't all know bob, but on a second or third connection they may. Microsoft realizes that if they show bob that new iphone ad and he purchases one the other connections may follow even though bob only knows some of them. It's a probability factor. Microsoft could on a bad case scenario have a leak and those maps reach russian hackers who now have maps of connected numbers, after a bit of research they figure these maps can show them which contacts are connected to which businesses, and social engineer their way into company funds.
Finally we're able to predict the weather to a point, as such by collecting user data and letting people who are employed to make something of this data - companies gain control over their users, and not just their users as said before here is information that can be used generically that works with a lot more people, and this control over a period of time works like predicting the weather. We can't change the weather, but tailored ads, keywords, relations and so forth can be used to profit by predicting peoples actions.
Perhaps I should title this the data cold war. It's all behind the scenes but it's happening, where in a real war where whatsapps' the dominant mobile social network road to vegas..
Azbubu
Honorary Master
I find it hilarious that the generally tech minded people on mybb are behaving like the FB people we usually make fun of.
CrescentMoon
New Member
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Either beat em or join em. 
TonySS
Active Member
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Muck Suckerberg tapes his webcam on his laptop as well.
He may take a selfie in lizard form, cant have that.