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Telegram publishes users' locations online

blog.ahmed.nyc

171–180 of 241 posts

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#171
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for telegram you need a phone number as well, which is bad if not for security, then for privacy reasons

You can hide your phone numbers from other Telegram users and still chat with them (this is the default). On Signal, anyone you chat with will have your phone number.

While you can hide your phone number, I don't think that is the default.

https://telegram.org/faq#q-who-can-see-my-phone-number

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#172
post #146
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are only coming to public channels were channel owners already publish ad messages. Signal is located in USA, so it's quite easy for NSA et al to pressure Signal to implement backdoors.

This comment is downvoted but as a person in the EU I can wholly agree with it. It's not that I never use american made/hosted products but it is definitely a consideration when making a choice. It's not that I don't like Americans, but your government and government agencies have verifiably proven that they don't care about the things I care about.

I mean haven't we learned time after time, leak after leak the EU countries just shove data on their own citizens over to the USA? I feel like you comment is ignoring decades of history.

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#173
Clickbait.

User explicitly shares location to all people nearby, discovers it is accessible to all people. Feature is disabled by default, and user must find this and enable it. They are not even prompted to enable it unless they seek it.

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#174
post #77
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…

Yeah, it seems pretty explicit that you're making your location public when you press this button. I'd say the 'bug' is in people not realising that pushing their location to a 'show users near me' function inherently reveals their location to some degree of accuracy.

This is the exact message: https://i.imgur.com/PDnMmQV.png -- Additionally, iOS allows you to make your location imprecise on purpose.

This is a non-issue, this guy "Ahmed" is just fishing for attention with an incendiary title.

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#175

Please change title so that it reflects that shared location is only for those who explicitly enabled feature to do so and not implicitly that all users location is shared.

"Telegram publishes users' locations online only for those who explicitly enabled feature to do so and not implicitly that all users location is shared" is a bit long for a title. While you're right, the title is accurate although it comes with bunch of caveats of course, some of them outlined in the article. That's why we read the full article instead of just titles. More caveats are that they are using a smartphone…

"Telegram publishes users' locations online only for those who explicitly enabled feature "

Why add more?

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#176
post #171
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hide your phone numbers from other Telegram users and still chat with them (this is the default). On Signal, anyone you chat with will have your phone number.

While you can hide your phone number, I don't think that is the default. https://telegram.org/faq#q-who-can-see-my-phone-number

Doesn't your link say exactly what parent said?

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#177
post #176
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you can hide your phone number, I don't think that is the default. https://telegram.org/faq#q-who-can-see-my-phone-number

Doesn't your link say exactly what parent said?

Now that I think of it, my comment was unnecessary.

> your number is only visible to people who you've added to your address book as contacts

Means they already have my number.

There is still a tiny difference. I can pick a username and chat with people who have my phone number (without them knowing it is me). It's a very small difference.

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#178
post #177
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't your link say exactly what parent said?

Now that I think of it, my comment was unnecessary. > your number is only visible to people who you've added to your address book as contacts Means they already have my number. There is still a tiny difference. I can pick a username and chat with people who have my phone number (without them knowing it is me). It's a very small difference.

Well not quite, since you might have had their number but they not yours. But if you just talk to someone on Telegram, they are not automatically added to your address book, and thus can't see it by default (as I understand it)

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#179
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a privacy issue. Users who enable the feature don't understand that are basically publishing thier latitude longitude online. Which can be resolved into a home address.

Blanket stating that users don't understand is pretty dismissive and frankly quite patronising. I'm a big privacy advocate, so I don't personally like volunteering location info, but personally know lots of people who will happily do so for all sorts of reasons (e.g. seeing each other on snapchat maps), they understand what they're doing. Simple fact is, plenty of people just _don't care_ and that is their right to d…

I think most people (including myself) may not have a good understanding what nefarious things this could be used for exactly. I don't have a stalker, and I don't think the risk of a targeted burglary is all that high in my case, what else could someone do with this to harm me?

Re: Telegram publishes users' locations online

#180
This is less of an issue in highly dense urban areas, such as typical east-asian metropolises. If you live in a building with 2000 other people, it becomes less concerning.

It seems like it would be rather easy to create an automated tool for triangulating users locations; by spoofing the GPS location of ones phone say 33 times, it should be very easy to triangulate every single person in the 'nearby' section.

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