Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 28, 2025 13:02 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Flee from Meta by LtWorf
Parent article: Linux-related discussion as a cybersecurity threat

I would fear giving telegram to my kids, given the groups that are readily accessible via it. And then, once you join groups, you start to get the DMs for spam/scammers/groomers/etc. Even if you don't join groups, random guessing of usernames still means you may get inappropriate DMs.

I have given one kid Session (getsession.org) - a Signal fork, making it distributed and based around a cryptographic identity. It is effectively impossible for someone to randomly message my child. And groups are much more limited (just cause of the exclusivity factor). It's also not-completely-trivial to setup a group, and if you do those are not easy to discover - so the group issue should hopefully not go out of control as quickly.

Flee from Meta

Posted Jan 29, 2025 0:06 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (2 responses)

I get individual spam on Telegram (mostly since using a Google Voice number for it…I wonder where the leak is…). WhatsApp is *far* more spammy and "hey, we added you to a cryptocurrency pig butchering^W^Winvestment group". I just lurk and report them until somebody wakes up and does something about it.

Flee from Meta

Posted Feb 1, 2025 22:06 UTC (Sat) by mrugiero (guest, #153040) [Link] (1 responses)

Is this that common when you use it with known people only? I used to only use Telegram for personal use and didn't have that problem. Then I had to join groups related to crypto for $DAYJOB reasons and became flooded by scammers. I believe there is a correlation there, but maybe it's coincidence and the spam got worse just about the time I started using it for those groups?

Flee from Meta

Posted Feb 1, 2025 23:02 UTC (Sat) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I hadn't added a contact on Telegram for years prior (I had since joined a group, but the spam started before that). As for WhatsApp, I refuse to let it access my contacts, so I can't actually join any group or initiate a chat because that is locked behind a "use your contacts" workflow.