Telegram releases Peer-to-Peer Login Program
Telegram releases Peer-to-Peer Login Program
Users sign up and log in to Telegram by receiving a verification code (“OTP”) that is sent via SMS. These messages are sent…
What do you think of this from privacy POV?
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Terrible, of course. Especially since they are aiming the service to improve sign-up reliability in countries that block telegram, acting as a relay exposes yourself. Carriers in China (where I live) and other questionable countries are actively snooping around, and since SMS are generally unencrypted, the simplest heuristic would figure out what you're involved in and start a very serious investigation.
On top of that, phone numbers in many countries are also unique logins to a number of services (again, here in China you need it for literally everything, it's THE number one digital footprint), and attackers could use the information for bruteforce/wordlist attacks on known services, or use them for social engineering.
As much as I like the idea of helping others sign up who don't have the means to acquire a foreign phone number, I would never willingly commit to that.
There's some incredible insight here.
On top of that, phone numbers in many countries are also unique logins to a number of services (again, here in China you need it for literally everything, it's THE number one digital footprint)
This is one reason I particularly dislike companies that require phone number "verification" either immediately when registering, or sometime after. Services like Microsoft, Twitter, Discord, Facebook, all find a reason to request it at some point. And that request often seems to be related to whether or not they can pin down your actual identity or not...
Especially since they are aiming the service to improve sign-up reliability in countries that block telegram
It's mainly to offload the cost of sending verification codes via sms to users, which is one of the costs that Telegram wants to cut. As far as I remember, it amounts to, like, 7% of all their annual expenses (I will source this later). A couple of years ago they decided not to send sms verification codes when you sign in from a third-party app, and just send the code to active session. This sounds like recipe for moderation headaches and privacy disasters, but also good way to boost their premium metrics :)