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Telegram is still leaking user IP addresses to contacts
(techcrunch.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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Privacy
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Is it a leak if it's a necessary technical part to a functionality?
The main issue is that it's not obvious to non-technical users. They can't asses what sharing IP address means either though.
Telegram defaults to using p2p for calls, for contacts only.
It's not a thorough privacy default, but otherwise seems fine to me. If you want p2p it needs to be enabled, and if you don't it needs to be disabled. No-contacts and no-calls receive no IP.
Here's a professional security researcher/pentester explaining in depth why "leaking" IP is blown out of proportion
The relevant gist is
Usually it is the town, or nearby town. If you live in a more rural area that can narrow it down to a few hundred people.
Also in some less-developed countries the data protection by ISPs is very weak. Basically if you know someone in the police (or pay a bit under the table) you can easy get the exact name and address of the account owner if you have an IP.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Here's a professional security researcher/pentester explaining in depth why "leaking" IP is blown out of proportion
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I agree. This requires the user to actually save the attacker phone number as contact in order for this the IP address to “leak”
There’s still a chance that your contacts would have been hacked, and one could be vulnerable. But it all comes back to your risk profile. If you require hiding your IP address, you should turn this off or even use a VPN for all your traffic.