Hi Yall, thanks for having me (I just joined and also am not the most technically skilled person…though I do try!)
So I’m in a Telegram support group which is quite important to me. (They are talking about moving to Signal once the message backup feature is out of Beta but for now they’re sticking with telegram.)
I just got a new (android) phone and I wanted to sign in to telegram there. However telegram now is insisting that I give them $1 to do so “because of high SMS rates in your country”. I have never given them money before, so they have never seen my credit card info.
My question is basically…will this make whatever privacy loss has occurred to me any worse? They already have my picture and my phone number, presumably anyone given access to my telegram messages would be able to confirm that I was the person with that account? If so, is there any additional damage I do by giving telegram $1?
I know it’s not ideal and I look forward to moving to more secure platforms. But for now I need to keep contact with this group. Will the $1 make it any worse than it already is?
I have never heard Telegram ask this of anyone before. But then again, I don’t use it or have any history knowing about the product.
I don’t recommend doing this. They may have everything else, why add to that list.
I do recommend moving to Signal right away though. It will be out of Beta soon enough and you can use that feature then. I see no reason to not move to Signal today. Choose your next steps wisely.
If you already have a telegram account you can sign in to that one with the associated number, if you are still signed in on another device. That shouldn’t cost anything.
If you don’t object to this extortion on their part, there’s no harm. I’d pay via Google or Apple. I think they charge you for a one-week premium subscription “to help cover the SMS costs” rather than for an actual SMS, so don’t forget to cancel it if you don’t need it. As others have already chimed in, they only do it for new devices when you aren’t signed in anywhere else, so keep at least one session active.
Yeah, I seem to recall that they’ve done this in the past! And certainly could do it still. So it seems like they’re either after my ID or after my money. Or both…
As I understand it the justification is to prevent too many bots–they want to limit people to one account per phone. Also security, though as folks have pointed out here and in other threads, there are other ways to achieve that that don’t require SMS verification and (I think…I’m kind of green to all this) are more secure.
From what I know, Telegram asks for a fee for a SMS only if you have google services turned off. I recently had this happen, I had google services disabled and telegram asked for a 1$ (in exchange for 1 week of premium), but after I enabled google services it stopped asking for it.
I just got hit with a paywall on a stock GMS device after receiving their code by email, despite already having several active sessions. Now the only way to sign in on the new device is to subscribe. At this point I can’t tell whether this is malice or incompetence. It’s a dogshit messenger, and nobody should use it if they can avoid it.
Probably more like enshitification to squeeze more $ from its users. The final straw for me was how they put the ability to block unknown senders behind their premium subscription. I need to pay to stop the scam bots from messaging me? wtf?
The mitigating circumstance here is that it never existed for free users. It was introduced as a premium feature. It’s an open question whether it should be part of their free offering, though.
I am quite disappointed that this issue had not been discussed on this forum before. I myself, only found out about it a couple of months ago, but it was first reported in the news over a year ago, and it was relayed on PG as evidenced in the link above. But the titles of the article did not highlight the fact that Telegram started charging for SMS verification, and nobody seemed to be bothered by this specific detail.
I made my comments about it last month, and it includes a potential workaround by downloading a specific older version of Telegram. If this doesn’t work, wait a couple of days to try again. Also know that if it does work, you will never be able to update Telegram via any app store again. You will have to wait to get a notification for update.
Lastly, to me, even if there is a workaround, this is a sign to leave a Telegram. They don’t care about privacy. I suggest you make a long term exit plan.
I’d argue that it wasn’t necessary before because telegram was small enough that it didn’t receive as much attention from spammers. Now that they’re quite popular I get ~1 spam message/2 weeks. I’ve since moved to Signal (molly-foss), but still occasionally check my telegram account. Freedom from spam should not be a paid feature imo.
I suppose the activation fee discussed in this thread is a way for telegram to make spam bots much more expensive to operate, while still being good for business.
