Re: Is Telegram or Signal acceptable for harm reduction?

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Il 05/08/21 02:30, Jorge P. de Morais Neto via libreplanet-discuss ha 
scritto:
> Telegram/does/  have free clients on GNU Guix and PureOS repositories,
> which is great, but it is a centralized network, the server code is
> hidden, and it doesn’t even have end-to-end encryption!  So is it a real
> improvement over the fully proprietary---but allegedly end-to-end
> encrypted---status quo?

If you mean WhatsApp, the end-to-end encryption of its groups is mere 
fiction, because [to simplify] the decryption keys are available to 
attackers and metadata is not e2e-encrypted:
https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/713.pdf

Depending on your threat model, Telegram can be an improvement.

That said, don't give up so easily. If we're talking about half a dozen 
users, you can probably just help them create a Matrix account, by 
meeting in person if necessary. In my experience they'll soon tell you 
it's easier than they thought.

Federico