Android Telegram v5.13 has been released

Now it arrived on the store.

Changelog:

- Create themes with color gradients and patterns.
- Schedule messages to be sent when your recipient comes online.
- Choose venues more easily when sharing your location.
- Switch to Night Mode and back directly from the left menu.
- Get dark maps in Night Mode.
- Choose video quality in a more intuitive way when sending videos.
- Try dragging down in user profiles or jumping between messages in a chat to see new animations.
- Discover 31 other bug fixes and improvements.

Telegram's blog post about the update

No sign of server or TGX sources yet. No sign of Telegram caring about E2E (secret chats) either as Telegram Desktop still doesn't have it. (Only the Mac client that's made by another developer.)

Android Telegram may now feature regular source code releases

DrKLO confirmed that the source will be released with the binaries from now on. Subjunctive since we all know how inconsistent that has been so far. You will be notified as usual.

Let's hope for the best :)
🔒

Android Telegram note

Telegram is pushing about one metric gorillion bugfixes. We won't notify you pointlessly for those just because they release beta-quality.

None of these have any effect on your privacy anyway. The new reproducible builds are rather meaningless as well as that doesn't touch the important topics at all.

Things to look out for:
- server source
- consistent feature-sets, including E2E ("secret") chats

Once something worthwhile happens you'll know it.
🔒

Is Telegram Open Source yet? Let's find out!

🔴 Server
NO

🔵 Android
regular repo (except it's only squash commits)
https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram

🔵 TG-Desktop
regular repo
https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop

✅ deblobbed/real Open Source/FLOSS/privacy respecting clients:

✅ Android
Telegram-FOSS
https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS
available on F-Droid

✅ Debian
https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/telegram-desktop
minimally patched

✅ Emacs
https://github.com/zevlg/telega.el/
Respects deletion etc. as far as we know. Unless you're already an emacs user, this is probably a little too hard to use for you.

🔵 More sources
TDLib,iOS,macOS,web,WP
https://telegram.org/apps#source-code

➡️ Help keep Telegram free and private, ask for sources!

Android
@DrKLO (he's in @tgbetachat)

General
Pavel Durov (founder) https://twitter.com/durov/
Telegram https://twitter.com/telegram
Telegram support https://twitter.com/smstelegram
Volunteers in Telegram settings

Official library to create own clients
(doing their work for them.. but a truly original FOSS client would be nice)

tdlib
https://github.com/tdlib/td

🔵 iOS
iOS is locked down by default anyway and nobody has published a reasonably easily accessible version with trackers removed

If you care about your privacy, or want to talk about FOSS/libre philosophy in general, join our group: @PrivacyToday!

last updated: April 23, 2021

🔒

Android Telegram now features a regular repo

So far it's looking good and we've changed the pin to reflect this. The change likely doesn't come from the heart as the developer made his stance very clear, but rather from the marketing team which decided to push the "reproducible builds", requiring him to step up.
But that doesn't matter as we now get regular source updates for Android 🙂.

Still no sign of the server code, though. The server would be great to have as the TG architecture itself is nice and speedy and it'd allow running truly private servers.

You'll be informed of noteworthy events around Telegram (Privacy).

🔒

Telegram-FOSS v5.13.1 has been released!

The new version is only available via the TG-FOSS repository here, as F-Droid has not built yet. You'll receive a quick notification once F-Droid is ready too.

Thanks to the Telegram-FOSS maintainers for a prompt update!

Keep in mind the signature is different from the F-Droid version.
Changelog

No sign of server or TGX sources yet whatsoever.

🔒

Telegram-FOSS Github version
SHA-256: 3FF58B3315C5CE7C08232A1D9EC91996B891868E8D6C00172F88EA7AAEEC45C5

🔒

Android Telegram v5.14 binary + source have been released

Telegram-FOSS should follow relatively quickly as usual, you will be notified.

Changelog:

- Create three new kinds of polls.
- See who voted for what in polls with visible votes.
- Vote for several options in polls that allow multiple answers.
- Try to guess the correct answer in quiz-style polls.
- Use bots like @QuizBot to create quizzes with multiple questions.
- Add polls from the attachment menu in any group or channel.
- See exact progress counters for files as they upload or download.
- Change the appearance of message bubbles.

Telegram's blog post about the update

No sign of server or TGX sources yet. No sign of Telegram caring about E2E (secret chats) either as Telegram Desktop still doesn't have it. (Only the Mac client that's made by another developer.)

Telegram-FOSS v5.13.1 is now available on F-Droid!

Refresh F-Droid to update
F-Droid package

Changelog

No sign of server or TGX sources yet whatsoever.

Telegram-FOSS v5.14 has been released!

The new version is only available via the TG-FOSS repository here, as F-Droid has not built yet. You'll receive a quick notification once F-Droid is ready too.

Thanks to the Telegram-FOSS maintainers for a prompt update!

Keep in mind the signature is different from the F-Droid version.
Changelog

No sign of server or TGX sources yet whatsoever.

🔒

Telegram-FOSS Github version
SHA-256: 866E494C17B1A86CDDBEAF0723A27B5E39CBA2E7804EE18C5691BDCC08EB2408

🔒

Telegram-FOSS v5.14 is now available on F-Droid!

This includes the fix for the broken notifications.

Refresh F-Droid to update
F-Droid package

Changelog

No sign of server or TGX sources yet whatsoever.

🔒

Android Telegram v5.15 binary has been released

The source however has not. We thought they finally switched to normal releases? Apparently not. You will be notified when the source is freed.

Nothing privacy or freedom related in this update, just more fluff again.

Changelog:

New Profiles, Fast Media Viewer and People Nearby 2.0

- Access shared media directly from the redesigned profile pages.
- Pull down to enlarge profile pictures.
- Flip through photos by tapping on their left or right edge.
- Tap on your chat partner's profile picture to immediately expand it.
- Make your profile visible to others in your area from 'Contacts' > 'Add People Nearby' and make new friends.

Telegram's blog post about the update

No sign of server or TGX sources yet. No sign of Telegram caring about E2E (secret chats) either as Telegram Desktop still doesn't have it. (Only the Mac client that's made by another developer.)

🔒

Android Telegram Source v5.15 has been released

Telegram-FOSS should follow relatively quickly as usual, you will be notified.

Changelog

No sign of server or TGX sources yet. No sign of Telegram caring about E2E (secret chats) either as Telegram Desktop still doesn't have it. (Only the Mac client that's made by another developer.)

🔒

Telegram-FOSS v5.15 has been released!

The new version is only available via the TG-FOSS repository here, as F-Droid has not built yet. You'll receive a quick notification once F-Droid is ready too.

Thanks to the Telegram-FOSS maintainers for a prompt update!

Keep in mind the signature is different from the F-Droid version.
Changelog

No sign of server or TGX sources yet whatsoever.

🔒

Telegram-FOSS Github version
SHA-256: 3c9a7edcf5674beece439c1dd23efedd18759677a15e2171a3d6500609ac1fd7

🔒

Telegram-FOSS v5.15 is now available on F-Droid!

Refresh F-Droid to update
F-Droid package

Changelog

No sign of server or TGX sources yet whatsoever.

🔒

Here a special post from @PrivacyToday relating to the current crisis. Please help if you can and/or share to those who can! (In general too, this is always useful for cancer research and others.)

Help defeat Corona Virus with your hardware 🖥

This is unrelated to our usual topics, but it concerns everyone. You surely must have heard of SETI or BOINC or folding@home, massively distributed supercomputing where everyone can contribute their computer's power. These systems allow researchers to distribute complex work to many millions of computers. To help, download the folding@home software and pick "Any" from the dropdown menu (COVID-19 is included there, it may get a separate button later).

Current Corona specific projects (you don't need to do anything to get them, the software will do it for you):

➡️ 14530/14531 Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease - potential drug target
➡️ 14328 - Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease - potential drug target
➡️ 11741: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) receptor binding domain in complex with human receptor ACE2.
➡️ 11746: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) receptor binding domain in complex with human receptor ACE2 (alternative structure to 11741).
➡️ 11742: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease in complex with an inhibitor.
➡️ 11743: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease – potential drug target.
➡️ 11744: Coronavirus SARS-CoV (SARS causing virus) receptor binding domain trapped by a SARS-CoV S230 antibody.
➡️ 11745: Coronavirus SARS-CoV (SARS causing virus) receptor binding domain mutated to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) trapped by a SARS-CoV S230 antibody.

Every CPU cycle counts! Better with massive GPUs of course, but if millions of people 🌎 join together even normal CPUs help.

While we do not support Reddit , some posts on there do have merit.
Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/fhb5e4/coronavirus_specific_gpu_projects_are_now/

🛡

Before you get suspicious of your processing power being used for other purposes such as cryptocurrency mining, rest assured this is legit and coming from the real folding@home initiative. We suggest you read the following links to get more information about the whole process of protein folding and how that helps scientists come up with working vaccines and drugs against COVID-19 and not only. Make sure to use only the offical F@H software.

You can verify the link 🔗 with Wikipedia or any other source.

🦠 https://foldingathome.org/2020/02/27/foldinghome-takes-up-the-fight-against-covid-19-2019-ncov/
➡️ https://foldingathome.org/start-folding/

🛡

⚠️ PSA: To all German users, starting from tomorrow (2020-03-22), Telekom and Telefonica providers will hand over your phone's movement data to the government and other authorities. This is happening behind our backs using the COVID-19 situation as a cover-up! Telekom has already transferred 5GB of movement data to a Government institute (RKI) on Tuesday.

Click on the following link to start the opt-out process if you're a customer of Telekom:
🔗 https://www.optout-service.telekom-dienste.de/public/anmeldung.jsp

Telekom claims to anonymize mobile data, which is then passed on to the Telekom subsidiary Motionlogic GmbH in aggregate form. They are also grabbing data related to the age group (by 10 year increments), gender and the first 4 digits of your postcode. After inputting your details, you will receive a 4-digit code via SMS.

Click on the following link to start the opt-out process if you're a customer of Telefonica:
🔗 https://www.telefonica.de/dap/selbst-entscheiden

Telefonica is also claiming the same as Telekom, as in they anonymize the data and will only use it for analysis afterwards. The procedure is the same as above, you enter your details and receive a one-time password via SMS.

If you're a Vodafone user, you probably need to go into the app 📱 and disable everything. They have about 20 telemetry functions. Web login doesn't work with Vodafone prepaid SIMs, unless you manually request a password for it from their customer service.

Make sure to opt-out NOW before this goes into effect tomorrow!

--- Austria ---
Same phenomenon is also happening right now in Austria. The government currently receives - "anonymously" - the movement data of its customers from the domestic mobile operator A1. A1 claims its approach is GDPR-compliant. A1 also emphasized that the data could not be used to draw any conclusions about the individual cell phone user and that each cell phone is assigned a number that is automatically generated randomly for tracking. All these numbers are freshly assigned every 24 hours.

--- Italy ---
Italy, the European country hit worst by COVID-19 until now, has also requested aggregated data from the providers to track the movement of people, in order to try and contain the spread of the virus. The vice president of the region of Lombardy said more than 40% of people have moved further than 200-300 metres from their houses, based on data provided by the telecom providers.

--- Other countries ---
Following the grave situation of COVID-19, other countries are also expected to take the same steps related to the aggregation of customer movement data.

⛔️ While public health might be more important than movement tracking in the current situation, this can set dangerous precedent and open the way for these institutions to normalize similar behaviour and process these data points in the future for malicious purposes.

🤔 What do you as a citizen think? Do you trust these institutions to be benevolent with the data/power they possess?

ℹ️ Sources:
https://orf.at/stories/3158211/
https://netzpolitik.org/2020/unverhofftes-datengeschenk/
https://www.borsaitaliana.it/borsa/notizie/radiocor/economia/dettaglio/coronavirus-fsala-lombardia-40-persone-esce-da-casa-non-va-bene-nRC_17032020_1836_602124871.html

🛡