PushAll as a partial replacement for Telegram

Roskomnadzor unsuccessfully blocks Telegram, but very soon it will not be so easy to download the application. The pages of the telegram site and its web version will not work. As well as all links of the form t.me.

The main problem is not for ordinary users - they can fight locks locally and communicate in narrow circles even further. The problem is that the telegram will gradually subside in the Russian market, it will be difficult for new users to join, and old ones will experience inconvenience bypassing the locks.

We have been working with notifications since 2015 (4 years) Then telegrams were not yet so popular, there were no bots and channels. We offered our service as a solution in the field of sending notifications to many platforms without creating our own infrastructure.

And then a telegram came out with chats and bots (by the way, we implemented one of the first bots and wrote an article about it ) and in our posts they began to write “Why is this necessary if there are telegrams ??” And now the telegram is blocked. And most likely, multiple chats, bots, and channels led to the blocking, because it was because of the large closed chats that the ILV believed that large terrorist groups could be in the telegram. Our opinion is that the bots and channels in the telegram made it "Internet on the Internet" in an uncomfortable form.

What can PushAll offer to a Telegram user?

We do not have bots, we cannot communicate between users. However, one of the main cases of using the bot in business is notifications. We already told in detail why notifications via telegrams are inconvenient .

Basically, the inconvenience of notifications in telegrams is related to the focus - you have a chat and the notification itself is not an object that you can click on, but a message in the chat. By clicking on it, you enter the dialogue with the bot, and already there you can click on the button or link you need. Since the image cannot be uploaded to the message, it will come separately.

When working with PushAll notifications, it’s just the push with your data that comes to you - right away with a picture, buttons and a click link. This saves a lot of time and nerves (doing 3-4 extra operations is constantly very annoying)

Our AdminVK microservice works on a similar principle . Users who switched from analogs to telegram noted that they began to switch to messages faster and respond faster to them in the VC itself, without using the transition to the dialogue. You can also immediately see the user's avatar and attachment, if he attached it, it quickly orientates into the dialogue even before clicking on the notification.

We also have the PushFeed microservice- it allows you to drive the necessary VK / RSS feeds for scanning and configure filters for triggering alerts. This allows for example one of the first to read new blog posts, track the activities of large communities (for example, win in raffles), helps SMM work for quick decisions about writing new posts on social networks based on external sources.

And most importantly, these microservices are examples of work. You can go into the documentation yourself and make exactly the same microservices for your own needs or the needs of your company. And it's free.

What we can not offer, but what are the options

Telegrams in the form of an interactive bot are a controversial decision. Making a couple of clicks in the chat per day is one thing. But when the interface for the support service operator is pushed into the telegrams of the bot, this is hell. Much easier to click in a simple web interface on the dialogs and the mass of useful buttons than wandering in the wilds of telegram navigation.

We adhere to the ideology that the web is great. But pushies are needed in order to induce action. We do not want people to aimlessly sit on sites. We need them to come to fresh content. This is beneficial both to us and users and to those who generate content.

In itself, we can’t do the messenger functionality in the near future. Although there have been shifts. There is an idea to create a purely web-based messenger that will use PushAll push-notifications and work purely in the browser. It will be adaptable for mobile devices and for computers. This will allow you to open it everywhere without installation, and in a couple of clicks turning on notifications via PushAll becomes online.

Security

Telegram is famous for its encryption. We do not shine with any new products. We use authorization through a Google account, you do not need a phone number to register. On the google account side, multi-factor authentication can be implemented.

We do not urge you to leave confidential information in the push - the push content should be the heading to your real content, accessible by click and closed by your authorization. Also, protecting the push themselves is a rather stupid idea - on Android there is the ability to read the notification area when user permission is obtained. This is the reason why telegrams do not show message content in pushbacks - pushies are unsafe initially.

We do not have personal data. None. Only authorization information. We do not analyze the messages themselves - only the fact of their reception and click. For statistics purposes only for channels.

We recently fixed a serious link vulnerability. In our service, links are generated as go.php? Lid = number. By exhaustive search all possible redirects could be obtained. Now the old links will open only if there is authorization, you are subscribed to the channel, or the channel is public. New links will only open with the new sl (SecureLink) code, which contains a secure string. That is, technically, you can send your links in a notification without authorization - only those who accept the notification will get access to them.

Also, a plan is being developed to modernize the improvement of access control to private channels. This will allow you to give one-time invitations to the user via the link, and then withdraw access if necessary. This is one of the main wishes of the business at the moment.

Work stability

We have been working since 2015, during this time we had a couple of times moving and there was a serious drop by almost 4 days in 2016. 2017 and 2018 were relatively stable, but we are increasing resources and improving fault tolerance.

According to our calculations, the current system is designed to exceed 100 times the number of active users. That is, the supply is large enough. In extreme cases, even with a 5-fold excess, we can scale.

What will happen to the telegram in PushAll?

We support sending notifications via Telegram and will continue to support it. At least more than 30% of our users are not from Russia. If our provider in the DC will block traffic - we rent a small server-consumer abroad, to send notifications.