Why do cybercriminals use Telegram? (lemmings.world)

submitted 5 days ago by Kagiruew@lemmings.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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.?

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[-] daannii@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

So you can use online phone services. Like there are websites. You pick one of the available numbers. Use it to sign up. The confirmation texts and numbers are displayed on the website. And so you use those to confirm.

These are free to use. Quite a lot of websites for this.

Is that the anonymous method you are talking about.

And sure I guess you could use it for other social media.

I'm sure some do.

But there is more censorship on FB and the like.

this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026

32 points (90.0% liked)

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