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Is Telegram really safe?

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Is Telegram really safe?
Telegram claims to have very high security, but it is not in the list of the most secure messengers in the world; What is the matter?

Is Telegram really safe?

Telegram is not very popular in America and Canada for some reason (140 million monthly users of Facebook Messenger against only 10 million users of Telegram!), But it is extremely popular all over the world and its number of monthly users reached 800 million in 2023. This service, which was filtered in Iran a few years ago, still has a large number of users and by adding new features in each update, it increases the number of users day by day.

Telegram, with its diverse capabilities, fast performance, and special benefits such as free cloud space, is definitely considered one of the best, and for this reason, it has many fans in Iran; But when it comes to user security and privacy, everyone has a different answer. If you ask the founder of Telegram, he says that this messenger has great security, but this platform is not on the list of the most secure messengers in the world. In the following article, we have tried to find a convincing answer to this controversial question as much as possible.

Telegram is born

The date of birth of the Telegram messenger application goes back to August 23, 1392, which was first released for the iOS operating system. At that time, Telegram did not have many features, but due to its cloud infrastructure and the permanent storage of chats and content sent in the company’s cloud servers, it was still one ahead of its fierce competitors, Viber and WhatsApp.

Nikolay and Pavel Durov, founders and developers of Telegram, released the Android version of this messenger after two months. Since the Durov brothers were from Russia and owned a large part of the shares of the social network VK, there were many concerns about the security of information on this messenger and the possibility of the Russian government controlling and monitoring users.

The social network VK was also developed by the Durov brothers, but according to them, the company is now owned by the Russian government. Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, left Russia in 2014 due to pressure to provide user information to the government and sold all his shares in VK.

Although the business name “Telegram” is registered as a limited liability company in Dubai, there is not much information about the offices, infrastructure, and possible sponsors of this messenger. According to the claims of former employees of VK, a number of Telegram developers live in Russia and in the city of St. Petersburg, but Pavel Durov called this claim unfounded and said that in order to avoid pressure from governments and protect the security of users, the Telegram team moves from one country to another every year. places

Durov brothers - Nikolay on the right and Pavel on the leftDurov brothers; Nikolai Durov on the right and Pavel Durov on the left

According to Pavel Durov, after leaving Russia in 2014, he decided to establish the main office of the Telegram messenger in Berlin, but due to the pressure of the German government to access user information, Telegram had to leave this country and transfer the servers to another country. It became another

Since 2017, Telegram has chosen Dubai as its headquarters. In the FAQ section of Telegram, it is written that they are satisfied with life in Dubai; But as soon as the internet laws of this country change, they are ready to change their location.

Is Telegram safe and does it protect our data?

If we want to answer briefly, Telegram is safe in most cases; This means that all exchanged messages are partially encrypted, but end-to-end encryption, which makes it impossible for even the service provider to access the messages, is only available in calls and Secret Chat; While messengers such as WhatsApp and Signal support end-to-end encryption by default in normal chats

Of course, another advantage of Secret Chat in Telegram is that you can automatically delete sent messages, images, audio messages, and videos after they have been viewed by the recipient of the message.

Telegram logo inside the phone and black and blue background

These days, end-to-end encryption is the first word in the security of messengers; Because when you use end-to-end encryption or E2EE to send an email or message to someone, no hacker, neither government nor even corporate, can access the text of your message. In this type of encryption, messages are mixed in such a way that only the intended sender or receiver can decode the message, and therefore, it is considered the highest level of security.

There is no end-to-end encryption in normal Telegram messages

However many users do not know that in normal messages and content sent in Telegram groups and channels, there is no end-to-end encryption and the ability to automatically clear posts, and to increase the security of messages, it is necessary to use secret chat. As a result, when you send a message normally on Telegram, the content of the message is stored and accessible on Telegram servers. Telegram’s main reason for this decision is that most of the groups and channels are public and use them to send messages to a large number of users.

On the other hand, malicious users and profit-seeking people can use the great potential of Telegram groups and channels to commit fraud and publish immoral, misleading, and violent content.

In the past years, some Telegram groups and channels caused big problems by publishing inappropriate content. Of course, like other social networks, Telegram has its own rules and policies, and in this regard, it has developed algorithms to deal with content that violates its rules; However, it seems that he was able to use these algorithms 100% effectively. Finally, users themselves must report inappropriate content.

For more protection against this type of content, you can activate options such as Restricted Mode, which automatically detects and filters inappropriate images, by referring to Telegram’s security and privacy settings from Settings > Privacy and Security.

Another feature that is recommended to disable is People Nearby, which makes it possible to communicate with users near you. This feature can become a dangerous tool in the hands of hackers to access your exact geographical location. To disable People Nearby, go to Contacts > Find People Nearby and click on the Stop Showing Me option; This will change the option to “Make Myself Visible”.

Only the Telegram application is open source; Messages are encrypted with a proprietary protocol

For even more security, you can completely cut off Telegram’s access to your location; To do this on iOS, go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Location Services > Telegram and select Never from the Allow Location Access tab. On Android phones, go to Settings > Apps > Telegram and turn off the Location option from the Permissions section.

Another important thing you should know about Telegram security is that its openness is only related to the client application, and this messenger uses a special protocol called MTProto to encrypt user messages on the server side. Security researchers believe that to increase the security of the system, the use of standard encryption protocols is preferable to proprietary protocols. The reason for this is the possibility of identifying the vulnerability of protocols and fixing them quickly.

Does Telegram collect user data?

Like other messengers, Telegram stores some user data on its servers for 12 months; Including username, username change history, details of the device on which the messenger is installed, application usage habits, and users’ IP address. Of course, none of this data is used for advertising or commercial purposes, but there is always a possibility that under the pressure of governments, Telegram will have to provide this information.

Read more: Is WhatsApp better or Telegram? Comparison of WhatsApp and Telegram

How do we increase the security of our Telegram?

To increase the security of Telegram, we recommend the following steps:

Enabling Two-Step Verification

To activate this feature, go to Settings – Privacy and Security. Note that by enabling two-step verification, the possibility of hacker interception and access to your user account is almost zero.

Limit the information you share with others

Hide your mobile number, bio text, and profile picture from others. Also, in chatting with people you don’t know, strictly avoid providing information such as your real name, location, and any other information that will lead to finding your other accounts on the Internet.

Use secret chat as much as possible

Sometimes friends and family members may be in the same group, but to ensure the maximum security of chats, use secret chat with end-to-end encryption support instead of regular chat.

Join groups and channels with caution

If you don’t know a group or channel, never join it. Remember that the channel admin and other group members can access your account and save information such as your name and profile picture. Also, avoid emotional attachment to people you don’t know.

Avoid sending money or your bank card information to strangers

Today, fraudsters may pretend to be a support specialist, bank employee, or anyone else you think is trustworthy in order to access your bank account. In order to avoid fraud in Telegram, remember that you never need to pay money or share bank account information through Telegram to do anything. After all, in many cases, by checking the user ID or the person’s number and asking the relevant organizations, it is possible to verify the fraudsters’ claim.

Avoid clicking on suspicious links

If a stranger poses as a support expert or office worker and forces you to click on anonymous links, never accept their request. Due to the fact that most phishing attacks, infecting the victim’s system with malware, stealing information, and internet sabotage are done using malicious and anonymous links, avoid clicking on these types of links.

If something is too dreamy, doubt it

We all know that the probability of winning the lottery, finding amazing discounts, or encountering rare opportunities in life is very low, and if someone makes such claims on the Telegram platform, we should doubt his claim and identity. The best way to deal with such situations is not to respond to strangers.

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How to install Windows 11 without a Microsoft account?

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Windows 11
In this tutorial, you will learn how to start Windows 11 without the Internet and without the need to enter an email.

How to install Windows 11 without a Microsoft account?

Based on Microsoft’s decision and unlike how to install Windows 10, users must enter their Microsoft email or any other account to connect their Windows user account with that person’s email for the initial setup of Windows 11; Otherwise, users will not be able to complete the Windows 11 installation process.

This means that the user must be connected to the Internet to start Windows 11, and it is not possible to create a local account. This incident resulted in the protest of many users; Because in many cases, due to the lack of necessary drivers, users could not connect to the Internet in the Windows setup interface or Out of box experience, or they did not want to enter their email at all.

However, it is not impossible to install Windows 11 without the internet. According to its usual habit, Microsoft is not strict in the field of many of its decisions and policies, and like its own solution to avoid the lack of a TPM 1.2 chip for installing Windows 11 or existing solutions for installing Windows 11 on incompatible systems, with a few simple moves, you can force the connection to the Internet and Bypasses email log in at Windows startup.

If you are one of those people who are stuck on the Internet connection or email login screen when starting Windows, with the help of this tutorial, you can easily solve your problem and complete the steps to install Windows 11 without a Microsoft account.

Windows 11 setup without internet

There are 4 ways to boot Windows 11 without the internet that still work and are very easy to do.

Bypassing the Internet connection with Bypass code

If the Windows 11 setup steps are stuck on the Let’s connect you to a network screen due to the lack of Internet connection, the Next button will be grayed out until a stable connection is established, and you will not be able to proceed to the next steps.

Launching Windows 11 without internet

Not only in this situation but also if you need to enter the username and password through the portal to enter the network, you cannot do anything and you have to bypass this step. In this situation, follow the steps below:

  • In the mentioned screen, press the Shift+F10 keys to open the command prompt window.
    • Enter OOBE\BYPASSNRO and press enter.
Launching Windows 11 without internet
  • Next, your device will restart. Go through the setup process again until you reach the Let’s connect you to a Network page. Now, on this page, you will see that the I don’t have internet option has been added next to the Next option. Click on it.
Launching Windows 11 without internet
  • On the next page, click Continue with limited setup.
Launching Windows 11 without internet
  • After that, the page for creating a local account will be in front of you, and by entering the desired name and the password on the next page, the local account will be created and the Windows 11 setup process will be completed. If you leave the password box blank, the account will be created without a password.
Setup Windows 11 with local account

End the connection process with the Task Manager

On the same Let’s connect you to a network page, you can delete the running process that forces you to connect to the Internet and enter the Microsoft account by running the task manager.

  • Open the command line window by pressing the Shift + F10 buttons and type taskmgr and press enter to open the task manager.
Open Task Manager when installing Windows 11
  • You can also open the task manager window by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc.
  • After opening the task manager, look for Network Connection Flow in the Processes section. You can also use the search section to find it.
Open Task Manager when installing Windows 11
  • Then select Network Connection Flow and click on the End task option. After that, close the task manager window and type the word exit to exit the command line window and press enter.
  • Now you will be faced with loading animations and you will go directly to the local account creation section. Enter your desired name and continue the Windows setup process.

Remove the Internet connection with the command line

If you are unable to kill the internet connection process through the task manager, you can do it through the command line.

  • On the Let’s Connect you to a network page, press Shift + F10 to open the command line.
  • In the window that opens, enter the following code and press enter.
taskkill /F /IM oobenetworkconnectionflow.exe
Internet disconnection code
  • After the command is executed, close the command line window and continue the Windows 11 setup process.

Skip the Internet connection page with Alt + F4 buttons

Such a method may not work for all users, but if you cannot bypass the forced Internet connection and enter the Microsoft account with any of the above methods, on the Let’s Connect you to a network page, press the Alt + F4 combination buttons to force the Internet connection window.

Read more: The best-hidden features for Windows 11

If nothing happens after pressing the mentioned buttons once, try pressing the buttons several times in a row. Alt + F4 keys in the Windows environment can also be used to close running programs or open the shutdown menu.

The above methods work in all versions of Windows 11. If you encounter any problem in performing any of the steps, share with us in the comments section.

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Unveiling of OpenAI new artificial intelligence capabilities

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OpenAI

OpenAI claims that its free GPT-4o model can talk, laugh, sing, and see like a human. The company is also releasing a desktop version of ChatGPT’s large language model.

 Unveiling of OpenAI new artificial intelligence capabilities

Yesterday, OpenAI introduced the GPT-4o artificial intelligence model, which is a completely new model of the company’s artificial intelligence, which according to OpenAI is a step closer to a much more natural human-computer interaction.
This new model accepts any combination of text, audio, and image as input and can produce output in all three formats. It can also detect emotions, allow the user to interrupt it mid-speech, and respond almost as quickly as a human during a conversation.
In the live broadcast of the introduction of this new model, Meera Moratti, Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, said: “The special thing about GPT-4o is that GPT-4 level intelligence has been made available to everyone, including our free users. This is the first time we’ve taken a big step forward in ease of use.
During the unveiling of the model, OpenAI demonstrated the GPT-4o, which translates live between English and Italian, with its intuitive ability to help a researcher solve a linear equation on paper in an instant, just by listening to The breaths of an OpenAI executive give him advice on deep breathing.
The letter “o” in the name of the GPT-4o model stands for the word “Omni”, which is a reference to the multifaceted capabilities of this model.
OpenAI said that GPT-4o is trained with text, images, and audio, meaning all input and output is processed by a neural network. This differs from the company’s previous models, including the GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, which allowed users to ask questions just by speaking, but then converted the speech to text. This would cause tone and emotion to be lost and interactions to slow down.
OpenAI will make this new model available for free to everyone, including ChatGPT users, over the next few weeks, and will also initially release a desktop version of ChatGPT for Apple computers (Mac) for users who have purchased a subscription, starting today. They will have access to it. The introduction of the new OpenAI model took place one day before the Google I/O event, which is the company’s annual developer conference.
OpenAI
It should be noted that shortly after OpenAI introduced GPT-4o, Google also presented a version of its artificial intelligence known as Gemini with similar capabilities.
While the GPT-4 model excelled at tasks related to image and text analysis, the GPT-4o model integrates speech processing and expands its range of capabilities.

Natural human-computer interaction

According to OpenAI, the GPT-4o model is a step towards a much more natural human-computer interaction that accepts any combination of text, audio, and image as input and produces any combination of text, audio and image.
This model can respond to voice inputs in less than 232 milliseconds, with an average speed of 320 milliseconds, which is similar to the response time of humans in a conversation.
This model matches the performance of the GPT-4 Turbo model on English text and code with a significant improvement in converting text to non-English languages while being much faster and 50% cheaper via application programming interface (API). The GPT-4o model is especially better in visual and audio understanding compared to existing models.

What exactly does the introduction of this model mean for users?

The GPT-4o model significantly enhances the experience of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s wildly popular AI chatbot. Users can now interact with ChatGPT like a personal assistant, ask it questions and even hang it up wherever they want.
Additionally, as mentioned, OpenAI is introducing a desktop version of ChatGPT along with a revamped user interface.
“We recognize the increasing complexity of these models, but our goal is to make the interaction experience more intuitive and seamless,” Moratti emphasized. We want users to focus on working with GPT instead of being distracted by the UI. Our new model can reason text, audio, and video in real-time. This model is versatile, fun to work with, and a step toward a much more natural form of human-computer interaction, and even human-computer-computer interaction.
The GPT-4o model has also been extensively reviewed by more than 70 experts in areas such as social psychology, bias and fairness, and misinformation to identify risks introduced or enhanced by the newly added methods. OpenAI has used these learnings to develop safety interventions to improve the safety of interacting with GPT-4o. The members of the OpenAI team demonstrated their audio skills during the public presentation of this new model. A researcher named Mark Chen emphasized its ability to gauge emotions and noted its adaptability to user interruptions.
Chen demonstrated the model’s versatility by requesting a bedtime story in a variety of tones, from dramatic to robotic, and even had it read to him. As mentioned, this new model is available for free to all ChatGPT users. Until now, GPT-4 class models were only available to people who paid a monthly subscription.
“This is important to us because we want to make great AI tools available to everyone,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Strong market for generative artificial intelligence

OpenAI is leading the way in productive AI alongside Microsoft and Google, as companies across sectors rush to integrate AI-powered chatbots into their services to stay competitive.
For example, Anthropic, a competitor of OpenAI, recently unveiled its first corporate proposal to Apple to provide a free program for iPhones.
“We recognize that GPT-4o audio presentations present new risks,” OpenAI said in a statement. Today we’re publicly releasing text and image inputs and text outputs, and in the coming weeks and months, we’ll be working on the technical infrastructure, post-training usability, and security necessary to release other methods. For example, at startup, audio outputs are limited to a set of predefined sounds and adhere to our existing security policies. We will share more details about the full range of GPT-4o methods in a future system.
OpenAI
According to the report, the generative AI market saw a staggering $29.1 billion in investment across nearly 700 deals in 2023, up more than 260 percent from the previous year. Predictions indicate that the yield of this market will exceed one trillion dollars in the next decade. However, there are concerns about the rapid deployment of untested services by academics and ethicists who are troubled by the technology’s potential to perpetuate prejudice.
Since launching in November 2022, ChatGPT’s chatbot has broken records as the fastest-growing user base in history, with nearly 100 million weekly active users. OpenAI reports that more than 92% of the world’s top 500 companies use it.
At the presentation event last night, Moratti answered some questions from the audience and when he spoke in fluent Italian and the artificial intelligence translated his words into English, the hall was filled with excitement.
There is more. This means the next time you take a selfie, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence can assess your exact emotions. All you have to do is select a selfie and ask ChatGPT to tell you how you feel.
It should be said that OpenAI employees were so happy that ChatGPT asked them why they were so happy!

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Samsung S95B OLED TV review

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Samsung S95B OLED TV
The S95B TV is Samsung’s serious attempt to enter the OLED TV market after a decade of hiatus; But can it take back the OLED throne from LG?

Samsung S95B OLED TV review

What can be placed in a container with a depth of 4 mm? For example, 40 sheets of paper or 5 bank cards; But to think that Samsung has successfully packed a large 4K OLED panel into a depth of less than 4mm that can produce more than 2000 nits of brightness is amazing. Join me as I review the Samsung S95B TV.

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