GUEST: So the example that really drew me in to the story was Myanmar, where there was a military coup d'etat in February 2021. Can you tell us about one example in particular? I can collect that information, cross-reference it, then broadcast it right back into the same channel to hundreds of thousands of users.ĬHANG: And you mention a lot of different specific examples of these doxxing attacks taking place all around the world in your story. They can send me information anonymously. So what you can do on Telegram - if I run a big channel, I can use my followers to crowdsource information about somebody that I want to expose. So anyone can set up a channel, and those can have tens, hundreds of thousands of followers. It means that you can move quite seamlessly from sending and receiving anonymous private messages to then broadcasting them via channels.
GUEST: So Telegram, as you said at the top of the show, is something between a messaging app and a social media platform. GUEST: So doxxing is just the practice of sharing someone's private information on the internet - so their home address, their workplace, their phone number, some identifying information - usually as a way to intimidate them.ĬHANG: And can you explain why this works so well on Telegram specifically? So can we just first define doxxing? Like, how would you put it? Peter Guest wrote that story and joins us now to explain. But an article in Wired says that the app has now become a breeding ground for major doxxing attacks all around the world. It's globally accessible, offers end-to-end encryption for chats and video calls, and it now claims over 700 million users.
The messaging and social media app Telegram was designed to give its users a level of security above regular texting.