Why do cybercriminals use Telegram? (lemmings.world)

submitted 4 days ago by Kagiruew@lemmings.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Whenever I glance at darknet forums, people there always use Telegram for instant messaging. This seems like a strange choice for their use case, considering that Telegram is neither secure nor private[1], being centralized with Russia-controlled servers[2], phone number registration, no encryption for personal chats by default in mobile client and no encryption at all in desktop client[3], etc.

So why do they use Telegram instead of actually secure and private alternatives, like Delta Chat, XMPP+OMEMO, etc.?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] bobr@lemmy.libertarianfellowship.org 17 points 4 days ago

Telegram is indeed neither private nor secure (that is if you don't use secret chats), but the stupidity of people believing the narrative of

Russia-controlled servers

will never cease to fascinate me.

You know which group of people know for certain that this is not true?

Russians.

How can they be so sure?

Because of their government's constant attempts/threats to block it / slow it down. All in an effort to make people move to an actual messaging app controlled by them (MAX messenger).

Yes, absolutely, Russian government is trying to stop people from using an app they control, this totally makes sense.
And if it doesn't, you can always come up with some totally reasonable and totally not a conspiracy theory of them just pretending to trying to block it so that you think it is secure. And people might even believe it. Except for Russians, for whom Telegram voice calls are broken (blocked) again, and MAX is advertised as an alternative.

For fuck's sake...

this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026

32 points (90.0% liked)

Asklemmy

53113 readers

459 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS