Telegram Wants to Store Your Real-World ID. Uh, No Thanks

Storing your most sensitive documents online is never a great idea. But that isn't stopping the Telegram messenger app from trying.

On Thursday, the app's developers unveiled Telegram Passport, a way to store real-earth ID documents over the messaging service and so yous tin easily share them with individual parties, like a bank or payment provider.

The feature is meant to be a one-stop solution for carrying and sending your passport ID or financial documents. "Earlier today, this meant you had to upload the same document scans over and over for each new app. No more than," Telegram said in a weblog post.

Telegram Passport Telegram claims these sensitive documents will be secured through end-to-end encryption over the app. "It is encrypted with a password that simply you know, so Telegram has no admission to the data you store in your Telegram passport. When you lot share data, it goes straight to the recipient," the developers said.

All information registered to Telegram Passport volition somewhen exist stored over a "decentralized cloud." However, the messaging app then far hasn't provided any technical details equally to how any of this will occur. There's besides zip to prevent recipients of the sensitive documents from sharing them with other parties.

"This is a bad, bad, bad idea. I don't care if it's cease-to-end encrypted, keeping any kind of ID on your phone is a great mode to go identity theft," wrote one user on Reddit. Other critics are too pointing to Telegram's spotty tape on security.

For example, the app, which comes from ii Russian programmers, doesn't secure your letters through finish-to-end encryption by default; you have to enable this over the "secret chat" feature. Telegram also uses its own homegrown encryption protocol, chosen MTProto, which has been found to contain several vulnerabilities.

Users who practise opt-in to Telegram Passport are essentially calculation one more mode that attackers can potentially obtain their files. But to be fair, many people already transport their driver'due south license IDs and passport data online, despite the security risks. Sharing your ID documents over email or a cloud service tin can sometimes exist necessary to apace utilize for a loan or annals for a new chore, for example.

"Nosotros don't store and don't process any of this data. It's candy entirely on your device," Telegram'southward Twitter account said in response to skepticism. "We get sequences of symbols which could be anything. Simply you have the countersign that turns them into data."

If you're willing to trust Telegram'due south word, you tin try the new feature through a demo, which volition shop any data y'all share for i hour and so discard it. Y'all can upload your passport, driver license, ID card, bank statements and more.

The messaging app is encouraging tertiary parties to integrate Telegram Passport into their own services. EPayments.com, a Uk company, is the first to support the new feature.