You currently need a phone number to sign up for Telegram. Add an option to sign up using an email address or another method, like some messengers do (e.g., Wire, Matrix, Threema, Session).
Potential spam issues could be mitigated by:
Only allowing addresses from major email providers at first and slowly expanding reach if it's manageable.
Automatically limiting such accounts from contacting strangers until their perform some additional actions.
Allowing group admins to prevent such accounts from posting by default.
Use Cases
Avoiding an identifier tied to your identity, hiding identity from governments or people who know your number.
Workaround
Use a virtual phone number.
Warning: Do NOT use temporary numbers to connect to your account, as you may lose access to your account when you lose access to the number.
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
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?
D
Deleted Account
^ 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.
> 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.
No! You can't! The purpose of this proposal it's precisely this: if you create an account with e-mail, you can't write in groups that do not allow that and you can't start conversations to people that you are not mutual-contact with
That would eliminate only the spam problem. For any other activity regarding illegal content, such as child porn, pornography, gore or promoting violence (or anything else that violates Telegram Terms of Service) the restrictions wouldn't really be a problem for malicious users. You would still be able to join (and create) private groups and do your stuff. Or also texting people that messaged your first.
The read-only thing is still complicated and not very user-friendly as I've said before.
D
Deleted Account
And the problem with the user grow rate & disk space still remains a problem.
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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?
Tracking you by your IP address is certainly easier than accessing Telegram's servers. Don't worry.
This has no connection to the proposal but only with "identity tracking" issue.
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.
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.
No! You can't! The purpose of this proposal it's precisely this: if you create an account with e-mail, you can't write in groups that do not allow that and you can't start conversations to people that you are not mutual-contact with
The read-only thing is still complicated and not very user-friendly as I've said before.