Would Telegram and others please stop using phone number as a primary source of identity? It's 2018, I have a data only sim and I have no desire to have a phone number.
I’m not sure if I’d really trust any platform to store my personal documents without encrypting them myself before the upload.<p>But I’m always amazed at the pace at which Telegram keeps improving its feature set and UX. I haven’t experienced a messaging platform that’s anywhere close to it on these aspects. And for these reasons alone, it still remains my primary messaging application (while I keep checking the competition to see where they are).
I can't help not to trust telegram with my data, just gut feeling. You cannot use their service without giving your telephone nr. Now they like to have your ID's too. How can they honestly advertise "anonymus chat"? And the double ICO, over a billion fetched. So much money and data, where does that lead to?
Wonder if this was influenced in part by the fact that Telegram is <i>the</i> messaging service used by most ICO organizers. Could help in the KYC process that is becoming more commonplace.
The unintented consequence of this will be that now any website can easily demand real life ID. Ordinary, non-financial websites (think Reddit, Twitter, Hacker News) will require ID to log in, to protect against spam and make the community safer.<p>This implements the dream of authoritarian governments that internet access should never be anonymous. Russian government officials have long wanted to establish a similar authentication system.<p>Is Pavel with us or against us?
Telegram has a history of including fairly obvious backdoors in their products <a href="https://habr.com/post/206900/" rel="nofollow">https://habr.com/post/206900/</a><p>Why should anyone trust them for identification or for storing sensitive documents?<p>(And no, that DH behavior cannot be explained away as a simple mistake)
This looks rad. Unfortunately, I won't be able to use Telegram Passport. I can't even read this post without a proxy because my government actively blocks Telegram without a publicly given reason.<p>I wish they'd spend more time figuring out how to get around the domain fronting problem.<p>Then again I'm rambling.
Their messaging application had horrible security in past, and there have been many discussions on HN about Telegram vs Signal. Why would I trust them for ID when their messaging was suspicious....
I'd more happy if they would implement an option to turn-off link fetching and also ability to use their service without phone number.<p>As for this Passport - I'm not interested in this feature and I can't see where it would be useful for me. Not mention the security with just their assurances that nobody would have an access to my personal info - it's ridiculous to say least.
If this is to deliver your ID for the purposes of KYC laws, then that’s somewhat sensible, I suppose.<p>If, however, this is targeted at the providers who are actually collecting IDs as part of their AML compliance strategy, then there’s a much simpler solution here: just become the ID equivalent of a Certificate Authority. Dedup Telegram accounts by using a unique constraint on accounts’ validated ID documents’ extracted creds; and then allow sites to use Telegram for Single Sign-On. Boom—instant surety that each of your users is a real person, and not fifty bots laundering one person’s money; and no need for anyone besides Telegram to actually see your ID (i.e. a much lower chance of identity theft.)<p>Plus, if enough sites require SSO through an ID-document verifying identity provider, then even sites that ha d no legal reason to require it can free-ride off the benefit in user-deduplication it provides. Imagine, for example, a Reddit or a 4chan where users are still pseudonymous or anonymous, but where banning a user truly works, permanently, with no routing around it (unless you have the criminal connections required to buy yourself a new real-world identity.)
Well done telegram, I'm concerned some weird government might give a hard time before collecting these sensitive details.<p>While every third party is doing these things everyday, Telegram is under the risk of getting targeted.
Pretty much ripped off Civic <a href="https://www.civic.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.civic.com</a><p>Wonder how the price of CVC is impacted today...