I remember reading an article (that I unfortunately can't find right now, maybe somebody here remembers it?) about this being provided as a service to third parties, and it ended up getting used by banks and other high-risk businesses.<p>The scheme was something like<p>- "Provide us SMS access in exchange for free in-game coins" (with or without disclosing that the goal was to <i>send</i> outgoing SMS)<p>- Resell that outbound SMS gateway for much cheaper than Twilio to various third parties<p>- Third-party buys the cheapest message route available and doesn't care how it can actually be that cheap<p>- Random people's mobile games end up serving SMS-OTPs for banks
The main risk here is not to the sender but to the receiver. Receiver gets an OTP code from some number, it works, then they associate this number with telegram. So if sender, sends some secondary SMS like "we detected an intrusion attempt, please secure your account by following [some scam link]" they can have high degree of success.
Sounds like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White,_black_and_grey_routes" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White,_black_and_grey_routes</a>
it's a really creative solution to sms delivery issues and high costs, but I think it's pretty clear that the issues here outweigh the benefits<p>glad it's opt-in, at least
>Telegram allows users to hide their phone numbers from strangers, but using your number as a relay could allow them to look up your Telegram account<p>You can disable discovery by phone number as well<p>>Then there is a massive issue of privacy, which allows strangers to look up your number and use it for spam and fraud.<p>They have info that this phone number exists and nothing else. Ok, also that the user uses telegram. Not much. This info can be reasonably used for spam with lots of numbers, not 150/month<p>Also I already trust sms to the centralized greedy third party usually acting against my interests called mobile phone operator. Now this also includes some random person and it suddenly becomes "privacy nightmare"