Telegram Trilateration – Exploring The Risks

It took them over a YEAR to realize their mistake but they FINALLY lowered the accuracy of the “People Nearby” function.

Or it might be that the huge sudden outburst of negativity from Russian and Ukrainian media has finally made them come to senses.

Either way, when you run the function now, you will only see results of 500m, 1km, 2km, etc. I have little faith left in Telegram when it comes to privacy and taking issues seriously.

This repository will stay online, but be adviced that none of the data collection methods in here will work as expected.

Some Posts About This Repository:

[UA] (Focus.ua) Вирахують навіть президента: Telegram дозволяє дізнатися координати людей із точністю до метра

[RU] (CNews.ru) Telegram превратился в легальное средство слежки за передвижениями пользователей

[RU] (Habr.com) Telegram позволяет узнавать координаты людей с точностью до метра

[EN] (OS2INT.com) APPLYING EFFECTIVE OSINT TO GEO-MONITOR RUSSIAN MILITARY ACTIVITY

UPDATE: API method

Turns out Telegram offers the possibility to request people nearby using their API. This means what the entirety of the “Scraping” section in this repository became obsolete… Sigh…

Doing this requires about ~30 lines of code, instead of the spaghetti mountain I created by making an entire OPTICAL OCR SCRAPER AND PARSER… What was I thinking anyway?

TL;DR: I made a new script that can do the same thing, only much better and more stable.

Disclaimer

I have tried reaching out to Telegram via email. (Feb 22th 2021)
After more than 1 month of no reply, I decided to open up this repository.

I AM NOT ACCOUNTABLE FOR ANY DAMAGE OR ILLEGAL ACTIVITY DONE BY END USERS! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK AND DISCRETION!

A while back, Telegram rolled out a new (Opt-in) feature which allows users to find people and groupchats close to their location.

This “Feature” allows you to see the relative distance between you and a user in meters! By abusing that data we are able to pinpoint someone’s general location.

For more information click here.

Varshini

Varshini is a Cyber Security expert in Threat Analysis, Vulnerability Assessment, and Research. Passionate about staying ahead of emerging Threats and Technologies.