Telegram offers a ‘People Nearby’ feature for folks with the app to connect within a radius of you IRL, but that can easily become a safety and privacy issue.
The age of social media has made us more connected than ever. In some ways, this is a good thing, making it easier to communicate across distances, as well as meet new people we may otherwise not have. Of course, as with anything else, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. In their eagerness to connect everyone in the world, some social media services get a little carried away and end up revealing more than we’re really comfortable with.
One such service that toes this line is Telegram. While Telegram is primarily intended as a simple messaging app, it has some additional features meant to encourage connectivity — one of which is its location-based “People Nearby” feature. What sounds somewhat innocuous could prove potentially problematic for your privacy, not to mention your safety, so you should play it safe and disable the feature as soon as possible.What is People Nearby, and why you might not want it
Telegram’s People Nearby feature, in a nutshell, allows you to see other active Telegram users within a certain radius of your current position — particularly those who are currently browsing through the same content as you or participating in local group chats.
