Advice Request Telegram bots & malware

[Nikos751]

Hello to all!
I am new to the world of Telegram and I discovered bots etc. Along with that discovery, I started looking the cyber security side of it.
I understand that social engineering is a real thing at every comunication platform, and users can be fooled to provide personal/sensitive data to another party or open links in web browser, or download any kind of file, so such situtations is out of scope.

But what about the bots? I honestly do not know what type of code is executed, if there is containment, and what permissions it has on my system while clicking those buttons. Also phone number is by default shared, if not changed in settings (I think), so maybe telegram API's give the present of a default "leak" for every bot.

So to sum up, can a user get infected just by launching a bot giving commands without sending personal data, or just clicking the available buttons?

 

[Zero Knowledge]

There are bots for everything these days. Telegram is just one such instance, you will find a huge number of bots for Ticketmaster for concert tickets and ecommerce gear like sneakers especially, and designer clothes etc but most are relatively harmless. Most bots are just using or should I say abusing the API of Telegram and other sites/apps to do their dirty work. They are usually hosted on a VPS and use hacked residential proxies to hide/disguise their location/I.P address. Is it illegal? It's debatable but it's certainly abusing terms of service and unethical for ecommerce of such sites, but people just end up buying aged accounts and automate the buying of stuff with the aged accounts so it's really hard to police or enforce bot rules.

So, to answer your question for Telegram it is probably safe but as always be careful. Don't download shady stuff from Telegram or accept any shady files or attachments or share your personal details and you should be OK. You also have to trust Telegram because of where they are founded/located and that is the bigger worry than bots.