Telegram has launched a new program with which it offers users a free premium subscription in exchange for using your phone number to send up to 150 one-time password authentication SMS messages (OTP) to other users who log in to the social network, something that puts risk the privacy of those who agree to participate in this initiative.
The instant messaging social network has a premium subscription option from 2022 by 5.49 euros per month with which it offers access to additional tools like the ability to upload files up to 4GBdownload media content at faster speed, convert voice messages to text and send exclusive ‘stickers’, among other capabilities.
In this sense, for those users who want to access these premium services of the platform, Telegram has begun to offer a new program with which it provides a free monthly premium subscriptionin exchange for using your phone number to send OTP SMS messages.
This was announced by the application analyst AssembleDebug in a post on X (former Twitter), who has collected a announcement of this new program sent in the Telegram group TGInfoEn, after appear to some Indonesian users.
This is a program that the company has called peer-to-peer login (P2PL)which allows users to use the application Telegram for Android “voluntarily” offer your phone number for use it as a “SMS login code relay”.
As Telegram has explained on its support page, those users who join the P2PL program “acknowledge and accept” the legal terms, why Telegram can Use your phone number as a relay for a maximum of 150 OTP SMS messages per month. That is, every time users participate in this initiative and “a quota of SMS sent is successfully met”, they will receive a free monthly premium membership.
However, it must be taken into account that, as the social network has clarified, the messages SMS sent by the P2PL program may incur charges to users by their mobile phone operators. These charges must be paid by the user themselves.
Following this line, the P2PL program also entails certain risks to the safety of users, given that exposes your phone number to any other user who receives the OTP SMS to use the login code.
“Telegram cannot prevent the OTP recipient from seeing your phone number when receiving your SMS,” the company notes, while warning that those users who participate, “acknowledge and agree that they have considered any and all possible repercussions what this may entail and have taken the necessary precautions to mitigate them as he sees fit.”
In this framework, Telegram also warns that is not responsible for any “inconvenience, harassment or damage” that may be caused by the use of users’ mobile phones. This is because, for example, users who receive the OTP SMS can have access to a user’s personal phone number to carry out actions such as spamming or fraud.
With all this, the platform has explained that it has launched the P2PL project as a way of help ensure that users in “all areas” can reliably receive OTP messages“. Likewise, he has also indicated that the Users may withdraw from the program at any time.