Hi, I’m new here so please be patient.
I am posting here because my search results said this can be considered the oficial Tails Forum, although I can’t find any category dedicated to Tails.
I have Tails 7.12 installed in a usb that I use in Macbook. Most things work ok, but not all. Probably one day I’ll send a post explaining what doesn’t, if there’s interest.
I understand there are great risks as regards anonimity when using Telegram and installing it with persistence in Tails. My intention is to have a second, separate, usb for that and only that use.
I have recently installed the Telegram Desktop app from Flathub using Flatpak and following the run-on-tails guide in GitHub:
The steps in the guide are basically:
1st install “autostart” with persistence.
2nd install Flatpak with persistence.
3rd install Telegram Desktop with persistence.
I don’t understand the reason for the 2nd step when flatpak is already installed in Tails (maybe it wasn’t installed when the guide came out?). Therefore I tried to skip the 1st and 2nd steps and install Telegram with persistence with Flatpak’s option to install from a local repo in usb, etc. but I didn’t succeed. As a result, I decided to follow the run-on-tails guide and it works: Telegram is installed, it shows in the menus, it has its icon in the app launcher, it runs well, and all that is maintained after rebooting Tails. The guide explicitly states that it doesn’t configure the persistence of the app’s data but that it can be done.
I am aware that presisting the app’s account data is against preserving anonymity, but I still want to do it in this and only this Tails+Telegram usb.
This is what happens now:
After booting Tails and connecting to the Tor network, I launch the Telegram-desktop app. There I need to configue it to use Socks5:9050 and login, which means to introduce the user data (phone nr), wait to receive a code (via SMS or via the mobile-app (but not sure if it can be via SMS), and introuce that code in the desktop-app.
After that, I am logged in and use the app normally.
Data persistence:
If I close completely the Telegram-desktop app (even with ‘flatpak kill org.telegram.desktop’) and relaunch it, the session is there: I don’t need to configure the app to use socks5, neither to introduce the login data again to continue using it. But if I reboot Tails, I have to start the configuration of socks and the login again (the app doesn’t seem to recognize the user immediately). This implies having to introduce phone nr. again, wait to receive a login code in the mobile-app (needed to create the account), introduce that code in the desktop-app, configure the use of socks and log in. Since that seems to be the only way to identify my account after a reboot, I cannot uninstall the app from the mobile (maybe if I uninstall the mobile-app I could receive the code via sms in another phone (with the corresponding SIM card installed), and that would help, but as long as I have the app installed, the code is not sent via SMS. Even when you press ‘send it via sms’), they send it through the mobile-app.
In order to try to make the app’s data persistent, after logging in Telegram-desktop in Tails, and then logging out and closing it completely, I copied (with copy -a) all the data in $HOME/.var/app/org.telegram.desktop to the corresponding .var/app/ folder in the persistent dotfiles folder in Tails. Then, I rebooted Tails and all the symlinks from the files in $HOME/.var/app/org.telegram.destop are pointing to the correspondibg files in the persistence dotfiles folder. So, everything seems ok, except that it doesn’t help me in any way because if I launch the Telegram app (once the connection to the Internet through Tor is ready) , I don’t have the Telegram session open (as in a mobile-app or as it is after closing only Telegram but not rebooting Tails), nor the user identified. In order to use Telegram, I need to start the configuration of socks5 and the long login process again. That means that I cannot do without the mobile-app (at least until I check if they will send me the login code via SMS if I delete the app in the mobile) and that I need to go through all the login protocol again and again, after every reboot.