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.
Spammers can easily register and flood channels, groups, etc. Making distributions for other contacts. Also registering with email address is possible with temp mails, so there is no guarantee of identification.
Which kind of control do you mean? Telegram messaging is encrypted fully. What does mobile operators can do? Like other massaging app icluding WhatsApp, it is regular to use phone number for sign up.
Mobile operators can transfer authorization codes and personal data of the owners of the mobile number for which the telegram account is registered to the special services carrying out attacks on telegrams.
Mobile operators can know who are using telegram, and tell the government to arrest them
Snep
For all of those saying that you'll have to pay for a phone number, that would ruin both the aspect of privacy because with a transaction there's usually private data attached for the billing process and the argument that people either don't have a (mobile) phone number or share it when you can get SIM cards for a few bucks anyways and thus a new phone number
AλI
Agree. there should be a way to signup with an authorized email like Gmail, but if the user who don't registered with phone number, spammed, then the account should be banned easier without mercy!
Eurisito
Also, if the option is implemented, let us add a GPG public key to encrypt the mails automatically before to send it, because mails aren't absolute secure, but more secure than phones.
A you could be out if you lost your number and cannot recover it, also SIM swapping is a threat... Also, you can lost your number with a judicial order to the phone provider, by law they SHOULD give them the number.
If telegram sends the mails encrypted with our GPG public keys, it is impossible to others to enter into our account, even governments. Phone numbers are insecure.
Hexandcube
This is really important, especially if Telegram want's to be an open platform. In many countries (like Poland), you can't just go to the store and grab a pre-paid SIM card. You have to register it with the government with your ID. So you can't really be anonymous on Telegram.
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A you could be out if you lost your number and cannot recover it, also SIM swapping is a threat... Also, you can lost your number with a judicial order to the phone provider, by law they SHOULD give them the number.
If telegram sends the mails encrypted with our GPG public keys, it is impossible to others to enter into our account, even governments. Phone numbers are insecure.