In the meantime, I've hit block on the one number that popped up as having just joined Telegram. At least the block tools are fairly robust.

This continues a running theme of corporate platforms stapling my accounts together through their ads and data collection integrations instead of account setup. Google+ did the same thing to me by advertising my personal profile as "people you might know" to my family.

It would be really cool if the invasive push to advertise everywhere didn't also out people's private lives to family that may take hostile action against us, thanks.

I think what I’m going to do for now is keep Telegram desktop available, since contact metadata is not available there. I’m going to also set Telegram back up on a burner Android device.

If contacts from personal numbers keep coming in, I’m going to possibly recreate my account.

Are there good instructions on what to look for/how to restrict or remove Telegram metadata from an account? It seems my number is still associated to the one I set up properly, though it's possible they scraped my device number or Google Voice number from metadata.

Since this is getting boosted, I have no idea what's going on, and this could be Telegram being Telegram, here are the symptoms for my setup:

1. I have Telegram set up using a Google Voice number not associated with any other account and with blank contacts. That number is still the number associated with Telegram.

2. I had Telegram installed on an iOS device with co-residency to a personal number (defined by my CDMA info) and two Google Voice accounts (defined in Google Voice.app). The first account is the Telegram number, the second account is an unassociated personal Google Voice number that I use.

3. I disallowed contacts access for Telegram to my phone's contact list from the first time I installed it. iOS has a permissions model that lets you deny specific permissions on a per-app basis, and I've continued that with every subsequent contacts challenge the app has sent me. I'm reasonably sure I never clicked "allow" on any subsequent challenge.

4. About a week ago, I received a contact on Telegram from someone that has the second (personal) Google Voice account number. I assumed they probably searched for me specifically by my account name and ignored it, since they have that info.

5. Today, I receive another invitation, "X has joined Telegram", this time from an area code and number I recognize that should not have this info. This caused me to delete the app from my phone after blocking the contact.

My current hypothesis is that while main device contacts are denied, Google Voice's application furnishes this info or leaves metadata sitting on the device that Telegram slurps up. It's possible that something simpler is happening here, though, like fat-fingering a dialog a week or more ago. But I'm pretty sure that didn't happen?

Either way, it's enough to provide a cautionary account and to kill the app and its session from my main phone until I figure out what it's doing. I'm certain this is one of those almost-good-faith integrations with customer phone numbers, but I haven't figured out which one it is yet.

Also, gaming this out, I don't _think_ I've ever given the application access to the phone's number or call history (which is a separate permission in iOS). But I imagine it can get this from metadata pretty easily.

I just reinstalled the app from cloud backup briefly to read its permissions: Siri and Search, Background App Refresh, Cellular Data. No contacts permission or permission to read handset info.

So what do? I don't want to be alarmist here, but I'd really like Telegram to not be blasting my info to contacts it shouldn't have.

Also, the clue this isn’t coming in via search on my profile is it manifested both times as an automatic contact creation, which only happens when Telegram thinks you already know a person (ie, via mutual contact list inclusion).

Desktop app contacts listed just the two and folks I manually added in the app.

So that doesn’t look like my contacts being scraped directly by the app? More my CDMA/GV number in others’ contacts?

Or maybe they hooked up some other data integration I just don’t know about.

Guess I’ll keep it off my phone for awhile and see what happens. 🙃

2009 me: I really wish I could find more friends online.
2019 me: I really wish online could stop trying to find more friends for me, to sell, for cash.

@Goldkin This is the entire reason I am wary of modern social media tools ... I've not had Telegram do it yet but I am going to keep monitoring it closely because it doing that to me could actually cause a lot of social upset with parts of my family.

God damn it I was hoping Telegram wasn't falling into the same trap and if it does I have no idea what I'll use as a catchall messenger. :/

@Goldkin ok so i looked up my contacts because i thought, "ok maybe i kept his phone number?"

nope

NOT in my current contact list

I changed this list two-ish years ago, and have gotten TWO different phone numbers since then

jsyk telegram added a contact that i literally do not have, and told me they came to telegram

this is worse than i thought, and i was flippant about this a few days ago, and was like well i guess i didnt delete their number- except i did

i did

@lugh Oof. That’s pretty rough. Thank you for sharing.

Dunno what’s going on either, and I’m fumbling for innocuous explanations (old data? Ad network data? FB/GV integration somehow?). I’d assume there is one, but I _really_ want to know what source they’re pulling from.

@lugh np

It feels like they’re pulling data from somewhere new, but I haven’t narrowed down where yet. The two new contacts that are suspicious popped up a week or so ago and today.

Keeping my antenna up to see if I can figure out more.