Informer: A bot library that allows masquerading as real users on Telegram

This seems novel until one realizes public channels are already available on the web.[1] Also, I&#x27;m surprised Paul didn&#x27;t go with Pyrogram for creating the user accounts (which have unlimited cloud storage and 1.5GB file limits btw).<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;telegram.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;privacy-discussions-web-bots#view-public-channels" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;telegram.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;privacy-discussions-web-bots#view-...</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;pyrogram&#x2F;pyrogram" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;pyrogram&#x2F;pyrogram</a>

Sounds like a good old IRC channel logger.. but for Telegram. The title is some serious click bait.<p>That said, I haven’t checked deeper, if this bot is not actually using the bot API but MTProto, this is pretty significant as the bot appears like a normal user (and not as a bot, which are required to have a “-bot” suffix on Telegram).

What prevents anyone from doing the same with Signal or any messaging service that allows one to build a client? This program isn’t pretending to be a bot on Telegram, and it works as a normal user in every way (including the requirement for a working phone number, even if it’s a burner number).

This is not surveillance, this is just another channel crawler.

I maintain some medium-sized TG channels and constantly have what we have deemed “surveillance” accounts join daily. One of the admins of the chan implemented a simple turing test bot which requires immediate 60 sec solving of a basic math equation or the account gets kicked. They were solving the “click this button to verify” but none at all seemingly know how to solve 6+4, or they can’t read English quickly enough.

Unrelated but I wish Telegram would support encrypted group chats like Signal does.

This is very cool. I wish there was something like this for whatsapp so I can forward my messages to another IM service.

Is there any positive ethical aspect of this tool?

Going to hijack this thread to plug some basic Telegram API tutorials I&#x27;ve written on Medium<p>* Send and Receive Messages with the Telegram API <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@wk0&#x2F;send-and-receive-messages-with-the-telegram-api-17de9102ab78" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@wk0&#x2F;send-and-receive-messages-with-the-t...</a><p>* Running a Serverless Telegram Bot from AWS Lambda <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@wk0&#x2F;running-a-serverless-telegram-bot-from-aws-lambda-759b71e13218" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@wk0&#x2F;running-a-serverless-telegram-bot-fr...</a><p>* Integrating Your Serverless Telegram Bot with AWS API Gateway (published today) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@wk0&#x2F;integrating-your-serverless-telegram-bot-with-aws-api-gateway-8a6227d05eb4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@wk0&#x2F;integrating-your-serverless-telegram...</a>

Looks great. I found out about <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.telethon.dev&#x2F;en&#x2F;latest&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.telethon.dev&#x2F;en&#x2F;latest&#x2F;</a>, which looks like a usable Python API for Telegram user accounts (not bot API).<p>I can finally build by telegram-to-rss project!

This is so stupid. Public channels and Groups have a web frontend it doesn&#x27;t even need a telegram account to see or crawl them. Example link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;t.me&#x2F;s&#x2F;durov&#x2F;110" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;t.me&#x2F;s&#x2F;durov&#x2F;110</a>

Wow nice work. I&#x27;m sure Rukmini Callimachi will love this!

This makes it so much easier to keep track of the action on &quot;The pump &amp; dump cryptocurrency club&quot; channel on Telegram.

TBH what I find most humorous is no one mentioning the obscure 90s reference :)

lemme just say ... ha-ha!