I discovered this Telegram bot that can show personal information when you provide it with a phone number. This appears to be an OSINT tool that extracts data from somewhere, which raises serious privacy concerns. I need guidance on how to get this bot removed or blocked. Has anyone faced a similar issue with bots like this? What procedures should I follow to report such privacy-infringing bots to Telegram? Are there alternative methods to prevent it from functioning? I have checked Telegram’s help resources, but didn’t find clear directions on how to tackle this situation. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Skip the email and use Telegram’s in-app reporting feature instead. I dealt with a similar privacy-violating bot last year and filed multiple reports with solid evidence of the data breach. Screenshots and detailed explanations of the bot’s illegal activity are crucial. If you’re in the EU, contact your local data protection authority too - they can push Telegram to act faster under GDPR. Don’t forget to warn your contacts since these bots usually scrape entire contact networks. Document everything first because these bots often change names or disappear once they’re reported.
Contact Telegram support directly, but also try reaching out to the hosting provider if you can figure out where the bot’s backend runs. These OSINT bots usually scrape public databases and social media, so removing your info from those sources might limit what they can dig up. I got a similar bot shut down by filing complaints with both Telegram and the cloud provider hosting it. What worked was showing the bot violated their terms around collecting personal data without permission. If you know which databases it’s hitting, request removal from those directly too. These bots often run across multiple platforms, so check if you see the same thing on other messaging apps - might help you track down who’s behind the whole operation.
yeah, reportin to [email protected] works. i’ve done that for weird bots before. also, block it so it cant bug you anymore. just dont mention the bot here, it might get more peopel interested in it.