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Comment by mercora | Hacker News Reader

so i know some people around me who are using telegram and very likely most of them did not change anything about their privacy settings as usual. However, i do not see any of them in the list and it even shows me users some 10km away. When viewing this list on the top it has a button to make yourself visible so i assume if you don't do it voluntarily its not broadcasted at all which appears to be a non issue then, like he was already told.

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Yeah its very much opt in so Im not sure what the real issue is apart from being somewhat granular. How granular telegram makes it is the question. From the article the way they asked didn't sound like it was "do you live at 123 something st" but instead are you by, which even if you were a few blocks off someone might say yes.

For all we know Telegram is doing some rounding. Gonna need to test some more to see I guess.

If they don't want to fix this issue (maybe they find it's advantageous to let benign users find each other precisely), some kind of warning when you opt-in like "Warning: By enabling this setting, anyone around the world may be able to determine your location, such as your home address, even if they live in a different region or country." would be nice.

Not sure of the best way to word it, but making it clear that someone in a different continent may be able to see your location and address would at least make the full implications clear. Most users probably assume the risk is limited to people in their city (or a smaller area within it) seeing their location, and also may not necessarily be thinking about the address disclosure (even if that's arguably already obvious to some).

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