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Telegram publishes users' locations online

blog.ahmed.nyc

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Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#131

Post by hmottestad »

isodev wrote: post #68

A user does not show up in “People nearby” unless they enable the function. Doing so triggers a warning from Telegram informing you your location is about to be published and it may lead to undesired attention so it really can’t happen by accident. I’m also using the app on iOS, the operating system asks periodically if I want to continue sharing location in the background (in case I forget to turn it off) or I can j…

Does the message say “everyone in the world” or just “people nearby”? I think my parents would assume that “nearby” meant people physically in the vicinity!

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#133

Post by circularfoyers »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #59
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #3

Telegram has so many anti features and dark patterns that I really wish it was less popular. I honestly use WhatsApp over Telegram because at least I know WhatsApp is insecure while people sometimes act like Telegram is a secure platform.

The rich irony here is that Telegram, in fact, way less secure than WhatsApp, yet, it's users (wrongly) perceive it to be magically more secure. The reason why WhatsApp is more secure is simple: it uses e2ee for all chats, and consequently has issues with multudevice usage and chats syncing, while Telegram just stores all chats in its servers, sans so-called "Secure chats". (I'm yet to see one person who is using the…

I believe why Telegram is considered more secure is the source code for it's clients are open source. Which means it's possible to ascertain what the app is and isn't sending. You're not able to confidently verify that WhatsApp isn't doing more that it claims including verifying it's E2EE implementation.

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#134

Post by rlpb »

gruez wrote: post #28
rlpb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a fixed offset for a particular person, then isn't that just another variable in a simultaneous equation? You'd just need one more sample to solve for it.

No, because your solution will be off by that offset. eg. if the offset is 1KM to the north, and you tried the method mentioned in the blog post then your final solution will also be 1KM to the north. You can still use the information for limited stalking purposes (eg. has the person moved or not), but it's not nearly as useful as knowing their exact location.

Oh, I see, thanks. It's a location offset, not a distance offset.

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#135

Post by KingMachiavelli »

nnx wrote: post #57
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #3

Telegram has so many anti features and dark patterns that I really wish it was less popular. I honestly use WhatsApp over Telegram because at least I know WhatsApp is insecure while people sometimes act like Telegram is a secure platform.

This is a common wrong understanding. WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted by default (using same protocol as Signal) and there’s no way to disable encryption. On the other hand Telegram chats are by default unencrypted ... you have to specifically start a “Secret Chat” to benefit from end-to-end encryption.

Hmm, that's pretty interesting. Especially since even Matrix public channels (not sure if only by default or required but it seems like all public groups are plain text) are unencrypted.

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#136

Post by johnisgood »

Now that my phone supports it, I just installed Wire. I wish their desktop version had more options regarding appearance, for one. Honestly, it would not take much to implement giving us, users the choice to change a couple of things.

I hate it how I cannot make the left bar less wide, for example, and there are a couple of more complains, all of which have been reported a long time ago. They are easy to add/fix!

I also wish the desktop version supported sending audio messages just like the Android version does, similarly to WhatsApp. No need for these fancy audio filters, just let me record and send an audio message from the desktop version!

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#137

Post by KingMachiavelli »

sysashi wrote: post #40
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #3

Telegram has so many anti features and dark patterns that I really wish it was less popular. I honestly use WhatsApp over Telegram because at least I know WhatsApp is insecure while people sometimes act like Telegram is a secure platform.

Do you mind providing examples of "anti features and dark patterns"? Just curious

I would really prefer any location sharing feature to be something that ran on top of the communication platform rather than be a feature baked into the app. Create a generic information syncing mechanism for groups and let clients build features like location sharing on top of that. Location sharing seems so niche that bundling it into the client encourages poor opsec/privacy behavior.

As I have heard, Telegram is unencrypted by default. Both WhatsApp and Telegram are poor at making this 100% clear 100% of the time despite privacy being a major purpose of the apps. I'll admit I really haven't used telegram much but WhatsApp encourages backing up chats to cloud storage. WhatsApp also only provides a single alert that a contact's security code has changed. It also doesn't encourage verifying the security code on the initial contact. i.e if someone out of the blue contacts you on WhatsApp the only security is the phone number.

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#138

Post by shp0ngle »

nguyenkien wrote: post #103
shp0ngle wrote: post #58

I used the "people nearby" feature once, and I kept getting random messages from random people 2 months later. I could not figure out how the hell to turn it off.

Android: Go back to people nearby, click "Stop showing me"

...oh. OK.

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#139

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

circularfoyers wrote: post #133
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rich irony here is that Telegram, in fact, way less secure than WhatsApp, yet, it's users (wrongly) perceive it to be magically more secure. The reason why WhatsApp is more secure is simple: it uses e2ee for all chats, and consequently has issues with multudevice usage and chats syncing, while Telegram just stores all chats in its servers, sans so-called "Secure chats". (I'm yet to see one person who is using the…

I believe why Telegram is considered more secure is the source code for it's clients are open source. Which means it's possible to ascertain what the app is and isn't sending. You're not able to confidently verify that WhatsApp isn't doing more that it claims including verifying it's E2EE implementation.

Not really. It's just marketing push that 'Telegram is the most secure messenger' that somehow does the job, and the unwitting public is happy to accept it as a fact.

As of source code... do you really need a source code if you can login with just your username/password and instantly see all your chats? For anyone who has some remote understanding of the matter it clearly tells that chat history is stored on servers without meaningful encryption and that server owner can access all chat history at will.

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#140

Post by KingMachiavelli »

enw wrote: post #102
ShakataGaNai wrote: post #79

More systems need to truncate location data. It is relatively "easy" to solve this particular issue by just not returning highly specific data. Instead of saying "896m", return " You can also truncate the data you have on users. 2 digits of Decimal_degrees precision is +/- 1KM. If you're doing an Uber-like service, knowing where a user is down to a few feet makes a different (which side of the street). But if you're…

> Instead of saying "896m", return " Wouldn't eventually samples of arbitrary precision have their "range donuts" overlap heavily at the user's location? This could probably be automated to track in real-time someone's position.

Yes, you just have to spoof locations near the boundaries of the quanta. If they are less than 1km then test locations until they are in the 1km-3km group but you will know they are actually 1km away. Repeat between 3 and a dozen times at different angles and you can still determine a location.
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