Bugs and Suggestions

It's not a matter of how complicated the process of obtaining the phone number, and so the identitiy of the person, is. It's about that it's possible. It should be impossible. Do you know how to make it impossible? By simply not giving telegram the phone number. If the phone
number does not "exist", then it can't be retrieved

Deleted Account Dec 30, 2020

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There is nothing that is 100% impossible — you could be identified and traced even with an email address, since all email providers ask you for your data. Or you could be identified and traced by your IP address.

The process of obtaining just a single bit of information about a Telegram user is pratically impossibile, it would require dozens of developed, free & safe countries (where Telegram's servers are located) to get together, modify their principles, deny freedom of speech and order Telegram to disclose users data. But yeah, of course there's a very tiny percentage chance of obtaining your data.

> since all email providers ask you for your data

False. And I can simply fill it with false information

🤷‍♂️ Then you are probably violating that email provider's terms of service. And if the data you provided (such as first name or last name) is related to an existing person, you are committing a crime (impersonification and/or identity theft)

Andthe fact remains that you can still be traced by your IP address.

The law you are saying depends on the country, and the terms of services depends on the e-mail provider. It does not change the fact that there exists apps that works without phone numbers, like Wire, Matrix, Threema, or Session.

About IP address it's more complicated, let's say I'm at my university, that has only a public IP address, how can you say which was me if you only get the IP of the university?

Raif Dec 30, 2020

I agree with the proposal. Telegram should let users not give their phone numbers. Doing that, Telegram will become more privacy-friendly, like other messaging apps (Wire, Matrix, Threema, Session, etc). I hope it will be implemented soon 👍🏽

Gonna say that one more time: the fact that there are other messaging apps working without phone numbers doesn't mean that Telegram should follow their same path.

Tracking you by your IP address is certainly easier than accessing Telegram's servers. Don't worry.

Let's say people can be tracked with IP (I'm not saying it's possible, I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that this does not matter to this proposal), how this proposal is affected? Following your logic, they can be tracked either way, so why not let users sign up without phone number?

^ Referring to the previous message: I brought up my "logic" of being tracked with IP because you were worrying that a government, or any other entity, could physically access Telegram's servers and get to know users phone numbers & identities.

This has no connection to the proposal but only with "identity tracking" issue.

As I've said before, there are probably billions of billions of possible email combinations (from free email providers). On the other hand, there is a very limited amount of phone numbers all over the world.

Using phone numbers is safer for various reasons and there are better algorithms there to prevent spam & fake accounts (i.e. certain phone numbers ranges are blocked). Let's say you got banned for sending spam, promoting violence, pornographic content or child porn — you could easily change your IP address, get a new email address and get back to your business on Telegram in just 5 minutes.

Also, Telegram values its disk space greatly: allowing users to sign up just using an email address would massively increase the user grow rate — probably more than 10 more times than the current one — and therefore it would require more servers & disk space.

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