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Don’t worry, telegram is now gatekeeping certain privacy settings behind the premium subscription like it’s 2003. They also make it difficult to hide your pseu

Don’t worry, telegram is now gatekeeping certain privacy settings behind the premium subscription like it’s 2003. They also make it difficult to hide your pseudo identity from your phone contacts. I’ve had all the “discover contacts” settings turned off, and simply reinstalling the app caused people to be given my username without my consent. Settings somehow magically switched themselves back on and I couldn’t turn them off until after the damage was done. There was no confirmation prompt. Pretty sure this happened to me more than once. Please don’t ever compare Telegram with Signal.

LtWorf 3y ago
Come on signal until today had no way to keep the phone number private. Which is the topic here.
- fidelramos 3y ago
  Because unlike Telegram they strive to do things in a privacy-respecting way, and that's hard to get right.
  - guappa 3y ago
    Wasn't the saying "perfect is the enemy of good"? While waiting to have it perfect you don't have it good either.
kome 3y ago
i've been using Telegram on and off since 2015 or so, and i've never shared my contacts. never! re-installing Telegram has never changed that setting. The real problem with cellphones is that a lot of privacy-threatening issues are literally one fat finger away. And clearly, that's a feature, not a bug. That's why I prefer to work and message on my laptop anyway. but again, Telegram has been, in many practical ways, much more privacy-oriented than all the other messengers, exactly because you don't have to share your phone number to participate in groups and chats.
hanniabu 3y ago
> telegram is now gatekeeping certain privacy settings behind the premium subscription Such as?
- Systemling0815 3y ago
  Last online status
- vld_chk 3y ago
  For example, now you can’t restrict who can send you a message unless you have a premium. Also they added a “feature” that premium users can bypass non-premium users privacy setting “last seen and online” and TG will tell that info regardless of your choice unless you are premium too.
  - flexagoon 3y ago
    You're significantly misunderstanding the changes. > now you can’t restrict who can send you a message unless you have a premium. And before that you just weren't able to restrict that at all, there was no such feature. They didn't remove this feature for free users - it never existed. They just added it right now only for paid users. > premium users can bypass non-premium users privacy setting “last seen and online” That is absolutely not what the feature is. If you hide YOUR OWN last seen time, you won't be able to see last seen time of other users, even when they have it public. Now, premium users will be able to see public last seen times of other people if they hide their own. But they obviously still can't see last seen time of people who set it to private, that would've been very dumb.
    - vld_chk 3y ago
      Thanks for the clarification on last seen, I certainly misread it. About messages: hm, I was sure it existed before but maybe again my brain just lags. As someone who for some time created and moderated fairly popular chat (200+ people) for anti-war Russians, I have very long and complicated history of relationship with this service and have a lot of different grey-zone stories where it is hard to understand whether it is a mistake from users and whether it is a leak from the service. Hence I have a little low expectation and overreact on their recent changes
oli-g 3y ago
I don't get why people who are so paranoid about someone associating their Telegram handle with their phone number simply don't go and grab a burner SIM at Tesco. I mean I'm all down with the idea of tech companies respecting our privacy. But here we are, complaining that corporations that are at least trying (and that are operating at a loss since their conception for our convenience) aren't giving us "Snowden hiding in Russia" level of security out of the box, for free, just because we deserve it. All while we could easily implement it ourselves for like $8 and with no online trace whatsoever. It's like, Tails Linux exists, but FUCK GOOGLE for forcing me to Ctrl+Shift+Delete in Chrome if I want to erase a cookie. I'm so significant and certainly not a criminal, why do they hate me so much??
- guhcampos 3y ago
  It's not always that simple. In many countries, like Brazil, you need a valid ID document to buy a SIM card, and the number is then and always linked to your government ID. This is the case for quite a few relatively free countries as a means to fraud prevention (not that it's particularly effective though).
  - kojoru 3y ago
    Specifically for telegram there's a (rather expensive) crypto-based no-sim option: https://telegram.org/blog/ultimate-privacy-topics-2-0/ru?setln=en#sign-up-without-a-sim-card https://telegram.org/blog/ultimate-privacy-topics-2-0/ru?set...
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Keeping your username from phone contacts is quite a different problem than keeping your name from the government.
    - Geisterde 3y ago
      Why is there such a pervasive crowd of people who chock this kind of thing up to a lost cause? From my prespective, if it can be done, we should, we must, do it. Is there something special about hiding something from a government thats qualitatively different than hiding it from any other criminal? That they can levy greater amounts of violence? Isnt that even greater justification to privacy?

LtWorf 3y ago

Come on signal until today had no way to keep the phone number private. Which is the topic here.

fidelramos 3y ago
Because unlike Telegram they strive to do things in a privacy-respecting way, and that's hard to get right.
- guappa 3y ago
  Wasn't the saying "perfect is the enemy of good"? While waiting to have it perfect you don't have it good either.

kome 3y ago

i've been using Telegram on and off since 2015 or so, and i've never shared my contacts. never! re-installing Telegram has never changed that setting. The real problem with cellphones is that a lot of privacy-threatening issues are literally one fat finger away. And clearly, that's a feature, not a bug. That's why I prefer to work and message on my laptop anyway. but again, Telegram has been, in many practical ways, much more privacy-oriented than all the other messengers, exactly because you don't have to share your phone number to participate in groups and chats.

hanniabu 3y ago

> telegram is now gatekeeping certain privacy settings behind the premium subscription Such as?

Systemling0815 3y ago
Last online status
vld_chk 3y ago
For example, now you can’t restrict who can send you a message unless you have a premium. Also they added a “feature” that premium users can bypass non-premium users privacy setting “last seen and online” and TG will tell that info regardless of your choice unless you are premium too.
- flexagoon 3y ago
  You're significantly misunderstanding the changes. > now you can’t restrict who can send you a message unless you have a premium. And before that you just weren't able to restrict that at all, there was no such feature. They didn't remove this feature for free users - it never existed. They just added it right now only for paid users. > premium users can bypass non-premium users privacy setting “last seen and online” That is absolutely not what the feature is. If you hide YOUR OWN last seen time, you won't be able to see last seen time of other users, even when they have it public. Now, premium users will be able to see public last seen times of other people if they hide their own. But they obviously still can't see last seen time of people who set it to private, that would've been very dumb.
  - vld_chk 3y ago
    Thanks for the clarification on last seen, I certainly misread it. About messages: hm, I was sure it existed before but maybe again my brain just lags. As someone who for some time created and moderated fairly popular chat (200+ people) for anti-war Russians, I have very long and complicated history of relationship with this service and have a lot of different grey-zone stories where it is hard to understand whether it is a mistake from users and whether it is a leak from the service. Hence I have a little low expectation and overreact on their recent changes

oli-g 3y ago

I don't get why people who are so paranoid about someone associating their Telegram handle with their phone number simply don't go and grab a burner SIM at Tesco. I mean I'm all down with the idea of tech companies respecting our privacy. But here we are, complaining that corporations that are at least trying (and that are operating at a loss since their conception for our convenience) aren't giving us "Snowden hiding in Russia" level of security out of the box, for free, just because we deserve it. All while we could easily implement it ourselves for like $8 and with no online trace whatsoever. It's like, Tails Linux exists, but FUCK GOOGLE for forcing me to Ctrl+Shift+Delete in Chrome if I want to erase a cookie. I'm so significant and certainly not a criminal, why do they hate me so much??

guhcampos 3y ago
It's not always that simple. In many countries, like Brazil, you need a valid ID document to buy a SIM card, and the number is then and always linked to your government ID. This is the case for quite a few relatively free countries as a means to fraud prevention (not that it's particularly effective though).
- kojoru 3y ago
  Specifically for telegram there's a (rather expensive) crypto-based no-sim option: https://telegram.org/blog/ultimate-privacy-topics-2-0/ru?setln=en#sign-up-without-a-sim-card https://telegram.org/blog/ultimate-privacy-topics-2-0/ru?set...
- bombcar 3y ago
  Keeping your username from phone contacts is quite a different problem than keeping your name from the government.
  - Geisterde 3y ago
    Why is there such a pervasive crowd of people who chock this kind of thing up to a lost cause? From my prespective, if it can be done, we should, we must, do it. Is there something special about hiding something from a government thats qualitatively different than hiding it from any other criminal? That they can levy greater amounts of violence? Isnt that even greater justification to privacy?