Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Smirnoff 3978 days ago
BEWARE: do NOT add random Telegram bots to your groups!!!

Some bots copy the phone numbers of the users and add them to spam lists. So do not get surprised if you get spam messages in your telegram from Russian phone numbers offering fake glasses or home made soda (yeah that happened to me!)

This stuff just started -- no one is controlling it. I have no idea how to report this. Blocking offenders doesn't do any good after your number is on spam list. Hopefully, they do something about it.
3 comments
antorobin 3978 days ago
Hi Smirnoff, Telegram bots are designed to run within a limited environment.

Bots do not get access to phone number or anything such. Read more here -->

https://telegram.org/blog/bot-revolution

https://core.telegram.org/bots/api

link
Smirnoff 3978 days ago
This is from Telegram Bot FAQ -->The bots can receive:

- Service messages (people added or removed from the group, etc.)

And that's with Privacy Mode activated!

link
antorobin 3978 days ago
Btw by default, we have made our bot in such a way that one cannot add it to any group. :) Its completely personal with anyone who adds @icliniqbot from his telegram app.
link
luastoned 3978 days ago
Proper Telegram Bots (https://core.telegram.org/bots/) don't have access to your phone number.

Maybe you added an account (that did not end in @xxxxbot) that was running on a custom backend.

link
Smirnoff 3978 days ago
That could have been the case. A friend of mine kept adding lots of bots to the group until several of us started getting random spam messages the next day.
link
chrisan 3978 days ago
How is @xxxbot enforced? I see in that article they have an official "BotFather" which doesnt seem to follow that rule.
link
luastoned 3978 days ago
When you register a bot it has to end in ...bot, so any account that pretends to be one is easy to spot.
link
anc84 3978 days ago
It is so terrible that all these services use phone numbers for ID. Couldn't they do some UUIDish thing instead?
link
antorobin 3978 days ago
Hi anc84, exactly it uses the UUIDish thing, not the other way around :)
link
anc84 3978 days ago
Oh nice, so Telegram does not use phone numbers at all? That is good to hear (still never gonna use it as I want the full stack FOSS :} )!
link