Telegram wants to store your real identity card. Uh, no thanks | News and opinions

Storing your most sensitive documents online is never a good idea. But app developers have unveiled Telegram Passport, a way to store identity documents in the real world via the messaging service so they can be easily shared with private parties, such as a bank or a bank. payment service provider.

This feature is designed as a unique solution for transporting and sending your identity card or your financial documents. "Before today, it meant that you had to download the same document analyzes again and again for each new application," Telegram said in a blog post

T elegram claims these sensitive documents. will be secured by end-to-end encryption on the application. "It's encrypted with a password that only you know, so Telegram does not have access to the data you store in your Telegram passport. When you share data, it goes directly to the recipient," the developers said. .

All data recorded at Telegram Passport will eventually be stored on a "decentralized cloud". However, the messaging application has up to now provided no technical details on how this will happen. There is nothing either that prevents recipients of sensitive documents from sharing them with other parties.

"It's a bad, a bad, a bad idea, no matter if it's encrypted end-to-end – on your phone is a great way to get the identity theft." , wrote a user on Reddit.Other critics also point to Telegram's spotted file on security.

For example, the application, which comes from two Russian programmers, does not secure your messages end-to-end encryption by default, you must enable it through the "secret chat" feature. Telegram also uses its own encryption protocol, called MTProto, which contains several vulnerabilities. [19659002] Users who opt for Telegram Passport essentially add an extra way for attackers to get their files.But, to be honest, many people are already sending their ID card and their passport online despite security risks. For example, sharing your identity documents via e-mail or via a cloud service may sometimes be necessary to quickly apply for a loan or register for a new job.

"We do not store and process any of these data – processed entirely on your device," Telegram's Twitter account said in response to skepticism. "We get sequences of symbols that could be anything, only you have the password that turns them into data."

If you're ready to trust Telegram, you can try the new feature through a demo. the data you share for an hour, then delete them. You can download your passport, driver's license, identity card, bank statements and more.

The courier application encourages third parties to integrate Telegram Passport into their own services. EPayments.com, a UK company, is the first to support the new feature.