This is kind of loaded. I do think Telegram does an excellent job at ephemerality from a practical standpoint. Without being able to audit their server though, we have no clue if 'disappeared' chats and messages are actually scrubbed from their server.
I was once banned from the service for playing around with very old clients and had a back and forth with them over email for a week or so (it was re-enabled and they apologized for the inconvenience). They are prickly and refuse to give any details over how data is managed.
Interested to read a blog post about that story if you decide to write about it. Woz tought us never to trust a computer. Trusting software seems equally risky. Approaching comms from this perspective leads one to assume the best place to hide, so to speak, is in the open—in plain sight.
>Telegram does an excellent job at ephemerality from a practical standpoint. Without being able to audit their server though, we have no clue if 'disappeared' chats and messages are actually scrubbed from their server.
Aren't disappearing messages a feature of secret chats? If my understanding is correct here, these messages are not backed up to the cloud. Rather they are stored within your device. That's precisely why e2ee synced chats are not available.
The ephemeral functionality is different from end-to-end encrypted functionality. The former is part of the end-to-end encrypted chats, and can be modified as needed. It's basically a timer that controls when your messages disappear.
joecool1029|4 years ago
I was once banned from the service for playing around with very old clients and had a back and forth with them over email for a week or so (it was re-enabled and they apologized for the inconvenience). They are prickly and refuse to give any details over how data is managed.
jhabdas|4 years ago
decrypt|4 years ago
Aren't disappearing messages a feature of secret chats? If my understanding is correct here, these messages are not backed up to the cloud. Rather they are stored within your device. That's precisely why e2ee synced chats are not available.
eitland|4 years ago
Automatically disappearing messages are only available in "secret" chats and those are end-to-end encrypted.
tptacek|4 years ago
decrypt|4 years ago
stereoradonc|4 years ago
"Secret" groups are in the works, I believe