Telegram is Auctioning Phone Numbers To Let Users Sign Up To the Service Without Any SIM (techcrunch.com) 20
Ivan Mehta, writing for TechCrunch: After putting unique usernames on the auction on the TON blockchain, Telegram is now putting anonymous numbers up for bidding. These numbers could be used to sign up for Telegram without needing any SIM card. Just like the username auction, you can buy these virtual numbers on Fragment, which is a site specially created for Telegram-related auctions. To buy a number, you will have to link your TON wallet (Tonkeeper) to the website. You can buy a random number for as low as 9 toncoins, which is equivalent to roughly $16.50 at the time of writing. Some of the premium virtual numbers -- such as +888-8-888 -- are selling for 31,500 toncoins (~$58,200). Notably, you can only use this number to sign up for Telegram. You can't use it to receive SMS or calls or use it to register for another service.
Very cool. Should be $8 (Score:2)
Twitter kinda got their first: "Screw real authentication, just pay $8." How's that working for them.
Telegram has worthless authentication but pretends encryption=authentication (no) and that they use the Signal protocol (no, unproven and not open sourced for peer review). But Hey, Why Not?
No auth?
You don't even need callable number?
That's all great. It's just not useful in the field. Soccer mom field maybe. Reality opsec field uh no.
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Proof of Sleaze (Score:2)
If they are willing to sell a virtual number that can be used to sign up without a real one, that only proves that their collection of real numbers is solely for the purpose of data collection, and has no real utility other than just collecting your PII for resale or other abuse.
Re:Proof of Sleaze (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true - requiring a real number or a paid-for virtual one helps to limit spam. And yah... support the platform.
Heck, imagine if emails required a $0.0001 "stamp" to send. All the billions of daily spam would go poof.
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imagine if emails required a $0.0001 "stamp" to send. All the billions of daily spam would go poof.
It would certainly be reduced, but it wouldn't go away. The only fair way is to let the recipient specify the size of a deposit that must be placed to email them. The pricing should be interactive, so that people in my address book can pay nothing.
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You just seriously underestimate the number of people who fall for scams, plus the amount they can get out of just one success.
There are companies that pay people in a call center all day long to do the Microsoft scams. Not just the ones where you call the 800# on a shady ad, but also outbound calling campaigns too. Just one sucker and they usually get at least $600.
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Heck, imagine if emails required a $0.0001 "stamp" to send. All the billions of daily spam would go poof.
Or owned computers (especially mobile phones, as they often carry banking information) would make you very poor. You wouldn't think that the spammers would pay for it themselves, did you?
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Not true - requiring a real number or a paid-for virtual one helps to limit spam.
Well, it doesn't work. I got tons of crypto scam spam through Telegram (hey, that rhymes) until I turned off the feature which allowed randos to add me to groups. I'm gonna go with what the other poster said - they're collecting phone numbers for some monetizing-related purpose - probably to sell to crypto scam spammers.
Re: Proof of Sleaze (Score:3)
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If you honestly believe it proves it for Telegram it equally proves it for Signal.
Allowing a small subset of users to avoid the phonenumber sign up for a fee changes very little about the ease of use (automatic finding of contacts) and spam prevention. The reasons Signal states for its use remain equally valid for Telegram, even when a small subset have an alternative.
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So is it a phone number or not? (Score:2)
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I am guessing it is "a number" that gets put in the phone number field, but is not an actual phone number. Essentially it's an account number.
Wow (Score:3)
Is this for people who don't want to fork out $0.99 for a cheap or old empty prepaid Simcard, to discard after having set up the app?
The phone number is not needed after that, you can install it on tablets who don't have any simcard.
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Why oh why, can't I? (Score:2)
Can someone tell me why, now that all phone service is digital, do we still need phone numbers? Do we really need to know the ip address of every site we want to visit? Then why do we need their phone numbers?
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You're right of course, but let me know when you're able to convince your grandpa of that.
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Uh, web sites have IP addresses. People have phone numbers. If you're really asking why we don't have something like DNS for phone numbers, we do. It used to be called the "phone book" but wasn't great because we didn't enforce unique names. Turns out people get annoyed when they want to name their baby "Joe Blow" and the hospital says that's taken, but they can have "Joe Blow11".
So now we all have our own little DNS that we carry around with us and just contains the people we actually want to talk to.
VOIP Numbers are even cheaper (Score:2)