21–30 of 85 posts
Would Telegram and others please stop using phone number as a primary source of identity? It's 2018, I have a data only sim and I have no desire to have a phone number.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed that such services should stop using phone numbers. In the meantime, you can get inexpensive numbers from https://jmp.chat/ - useful for 2FA as well.
Yeah I use Google Voice for this purpose, which isn't _really_ 2fa anyway (because it's my google account).
Would Telegram and others please stop using phone number as a primary source of identity? It's 2018, I have a data only sim and I have no desire to have a phone number.
Agreed that such services should stop using phone numbers. In the meantime, you can get inexpensive numbers from https://jmp.chat/ - useful for 2FA as well.
It's two passwords, both are something you have to know, there's nothing you need to have or be (sms and biometrics respectively)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I cannot up-vote this more. Many people don't realise that they don't own their phone number! It is possible to own a phone number but it is not widely available just like domains are. Hence it is a stupid idea to use it as an identity.
I recently learned this the hard way. I changed my phone number after moving cities, and AT&T just leased my old number to someone else!
Telegram has a history of including fairly obvious backdoors in their products https://habr.com/post/206900/ Why should anyone trust them for identification or for storing sensitive documents? (And no, that DH behavior cannot be explained away as a simple mistake)
I feel that your post is being a bit dishonest, as it ends with the following: > UPD: The story ended well. Vulnerability is corrected, documentation and applications are updated, treasure hunters of bugs are motivated, which has already yielded results (1, 2). It is necessary to pay tribute to the developers of Telegram, who immediately reacted to the article. It's hard to say that it's not a mistake when the author…
Would Telegram and others please stop using phone number as a primary source of identity? It's 2018, I have a data only sim and I have no desire to have a phone number.
If I could only upvote this more. I still want someone to take signal's protocol and do a BYOK approach. Let me use Keybase or something similar to handle identity management. Additionally, each device (or app instance) gets its own key. Signal and WhatsApp already do encrypted group messages. Treat each of my devices as different "users", who present with the same name. It's a tractable problem. (NB: Not necessarily…
Would Telegram and others please stop using phone number as a primary source of identity? It's 2018, I have a data only sim and I have no desire to have a phone number.
It could be worse, an app could say "You must sign up with Facebook"
I really wish telegram would focus on being a messaging app and not whatever this is. I'm not going to trust them with my info.