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Signal has been blocked by Venezuela and Russia

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/9/24217008/signal-blocked-venezuela-russia

Signal is aware of the blocks.

Signal has been blocked by Venezuela and Russia

For those affected by the blocks, Signal recommends turning on its censorship circumvention feature.

Signal is being blocked in Venezuela and Russia. The app is a popular choice for encrypted messaging and people trying to avoid government censorship, and the blocks appear to be part of a crackdown on internal dissent in both countries.

19 comments

Gsus4

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Why aren't they blocking telegram too? Is it because they use it a lot and can't block it or because it is compromised, so they have access when needed?

Brown_dude69

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They have not enabled the encryption by default and a common user can't understand that. That is why it isn't blocked.

spiderman

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Telegram's chat aren't encrypted (in default settings atleast).

rdri

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Aren't e2e encrypted by default you mean.

spiderman

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e2e are encrypted, but telegram chats are not e2e by default.

rdri

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Telegram chats are not e2e by design. There is no standard way to handle e2e in group chats, also most chats are public anyway. Chats are encrypted according to their docs. There are no unencrypted chats in telegram. It's just that people like e2e and call anything that is not e2e "not encrypted".

spiderman

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It's just that people like e2e and call anything that is not e2e "not encrypted".

Perhaps you can share your knowledge with me. I don't know how chats that are not e2e are "encrypted". If telegram or other parties can access it, is it truly encrypted?

rdri

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If telegram or other parties can access it, is it truly encrypted?

If the website creator and others can access the content hiding behind SSL/HTTPS, is it truly encrypted? It's similar with telegram, except they also don't keep the raw data on servers etc.

rdri

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On April 16, 2018, the Russian government began blocking access to Telegram, an instant messaging service. The blocking led to interruptions in the operation of many third-party services, but practically did not affect the availability of Telegram in Russia. It was officially unblocked on June 19, 2020

Some say it was unblocked because they made a deal with Durov. Another opinion is that too many people and services including officials continued to rely on it even during the time it was blocked. Regardless, Telegram did a huge job on circumventing those blocks.

doodledup

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Telegram isn't circumventing shit. You cannot circumvent a coubtry-wide block. If I learned anything from Russia it's that they are very determined when it comes to stuff like that.

rdri

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I used telegram during all that time in Russia. It did circumvent the shit out of the RKN. I guess you used somewhat limited data to learn something from Russia.

doodledup

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Did they circumvent it? Seems highly unlikely to me that Russia secceeds with every centralized service but not with Telegram.

rdri

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Others didn't try to circumvent much because Russian market is usually too small for any app to care. Telegram's user base is historically huge is Russia.

doodledup

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Nah man. Sounds phishy af.

I'd not recommend any Russian to use Telegram as a daily driver for anything other than a public forum. It's not designed with privacy and security in mind. Default chats aren't even encrypted and your profile and social graph is in plain text on their servers. Wouldn't risk using that just because someone said it's circumventing a blockage.

rdri

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You seem to have a detailed opinion about something you hardly even used, or researched. It's fine, you don't have to like it and I don't care. But I will point out mistakes.

Most people do use it for public communication only. Not in plain text. Telegram was popular even before it started circumventing anything.

RootBeerGuy

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I think you are answering your question yourself. There's nothing you cannot fully block, unless it uses vpns/proxies and then you can try and block those too.

cynthorpe

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Whispering? Believe it or not… jail.

dEVbiKub

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Without having read the article, I guess it relates to the recent Signal blog post by Meredith Whittaker https://signal.org/blog/proxy-please/

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