Is Telegram the Last Line of Defense for Privacy

Telegram is a world-renowned encrypted chat tool. It provides end-to-end encryption for one-to-one chats based on 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, 2048-bit RSA encryption and Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Telegram is quite confident in how it encrypts and promises a $100,000 bonus if anyone succeeds in cracking intercepted communications. Zerodium, the vulnerability acquisition platform, also made a quote of up to $500,000 for the vulnerability of Telegram, which reflects Telegram’s high degree of security. However, it is the centralized regulation instead of technology that brought Telegram down. Telegram lost a $14,000 lawsuit for refusing to provide the Federal Security Service of Russian(FSB) the keys it needed to access users’ data for the sake of national security. A few months later, an ultimatum was sent to Telegram said it would face a blockage of the entire network if not comply. The story ended up with Telegram being forced to withdraw from Russia.

This time it is Russia. If Telegram is banned by all countries, can we still find chat tool that protects privacy? Is the last line of defense for privacy over the Internet about to collapse? The answer is no. Even if Telegram gets blocked by all countries in the world, there are still decentralized privacy-protecting chat tools like VDS. With privacy in mind, VDS has developed a distributed anonymous network that runs VDS’s secret chats in a completely decentralized manner.

The distributed anonymous network of VDS is composed of numerous super master nodes built by VDS players with hidden IPs. These super master nodes are only responsible for network-enabled services such as data processing and information transmission and do not store information, which ensure the security of personal privacy in a decentralized environment. Moreover, service-providing super master nodes are dispersed all over the world. More scattered super master nodes make the anonymous network of VDS even stronger. On the other hand, as long as super master node exists, the anonymous network of VDS will exist as well. This is a truly independent and secured privacy network that cannot be shut down.

The distributed anonymous network cannot be restricted or shut down unless the global Internet is closed. And of course, we can still build the LAN to continue using it. Decentralized servers are also more secured than centralized ones. The centralized encrypted chat relies too much on the centralized server and has a low rate of fault-tolerance. They cannot bear any problem or error, otherwise the whole system will crash. Distributed systems do not have such concerns. With the development of VDS, the network will become more secured with the increasing number of super master nodes, and have better computing efficiency than centralized servers. All super master nodes are anonymous to avoid other social influences over the network, which centralized servers cannot guarantee even with high technical skill and stable network, such as the well-known centralized encrypted chat Telegram whose founder is a Russian superrich. Based in Germany, Telegram has located its important nodes in other countries like the United States, Europe and Singapore. All information regarding the founder, company entity and server are checkable. It is usually the information connected with reality that is the weakest. Not only the entire network of Telegram is blocked, even the founder is forced to leave Russia.

There’s no unbreakable fortress in the world. Telegram was once questioned that it does not turn on end-to-end encryption by default on the PC side, resulting in the disclosure of some user information misled by its security promotion. Relying on a single “hub” for computing, encryption and transmission of all information is a risk itself, no matter how sophisticated the technology is, there’s no guarantee that the hub will never fail. However, the distributed anonymous network of VDS is different. Each message will be broken into multiple fragments with separate encryption and transmitted through different super master modes. Even if there is information leakage due to problem with the super master nodes, it is still difficult to get the whole piece of information.

Users registration in centralized encrypted chats is often bound with other centralized institutions, like using a mobile number or email to register and log in, which also casts doubt on their security. With the intervention of relevant authorities, these centralized agencies can hijack user verification code, which means that your chat account can be unwittingly logged in by a third party. And accounts with mobile numbers and emails are bound with a large amount of personal info, which may reveal use’s information at registration and login. In the distributed anonymous network of VDS, a VID is the only requirement for using secret chat. To create a VID, you just need to send a certain amount of Vollar to another VID. No personal information is required. The only identity authentication is a private key protected by the encrypted algorithm.

In a word, centralized chat tools like Telegram will not be the last line of privacy defense. It can even be said that due to the characteristics of centralized systems, such chat tool doesn’t truly protect our privacy, the real private chat has to rely on the decentralized systems and networks.