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If it's public and available and Telegram didn't sign a contract or EULA which forbids using this endpoint, it's legitimate. The cons is that Google can break
by jokethrowaway 5y ago
If it's public and available and Telegram didn't sign a contract or EULA which forbids using this endpoint, it's legitimate.
The cons is that Google can break the endpoint at any time.
That said, I wrote a similar hack for a Wordpress plugin 10 years ago which automatically generated articles in multiple languages (think SEO farming).
I just looked at what their frontend app was calling and used it.
I run a business which needs to run programmatically searches on different search engines and using official APIs is out of the question.
I didn't even check what their API offering is.
The only search engine that seriously try to prevents scraper is Yandex which asks for a lot of captchas but I've built a system to allow humans to just process captchas and give back to the code the result.
- serioussecurity 5y agoThis definitely violates the terms of service, if that's what you're asking.
- iqanq 5y agoThey never agreed to the ToS, so they can't have violated them.
- digitaLandscape 5y ago
- fault1 5y agoIt does seem to violate the Google Play ToS in terms of applications not using unauthorized 3rd party resources. Google will most likely just fingerprint these calls and block them serverside, I'm guessing.
- zarzavat 5y agoIf you use a service by someone else then you implicitly agree to the terms. I agree that browsewrap style ToS are bullshit where merely landing on a website supposedly binds you to whatever terms they wrote, but if you actually go out of your way to integrate someone's API into your code you are definitely agreeing to the terms!
- EMIRELADERO 5y agoHow so? A contract requires a "meeting of the minds". If one of the minds doesn't agree to (or even see) the contract, then how could it be enforceable?
- omnimus 5y agoThis might not be so clear. If you think about google crawling your site without you knowing it - technically its same unprotected request/response as calling API. If i had TOS that prohibits crawling of the site (instead of robots.txt) does it mean that google is breaking my TOS? Seems like the solution is clearly for me to protect my site/api - not other way around.
- jaakl 5y agoNow if I add to all my backend response headers ”x-terms: you must agree usage terms: https://blah” https://xn--blah-jb7a would it make it explicit enough, also for the ignorant engineer with “But this API just works” attitude ? It should be a industry standard really.