Telegram user identification in conjunction with the Fragment platform and the TON blockchain

Hello, %habrauser%! Today we will talk about the Fragment platform, the TON blockchain technology and user identification. It is interesting to know how this bundle allows you to deanonymize users in Telegram? Then welcome under the cut!

DISCLAIMER: This article is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a guide to misconduct or educational material for covering up wrongdoing.

What is Fragment?

Fragment is an open, free platform for buying or selling collectibles: usernames, virtual phone numbers or tokens. It supports direct, secure and ~~not~~anonymous sales, as well as public auctions in which you can participate and even win something.

A bit of context

What is a collectible?

A collectible is a unique item (username, virtual phone number or token) that is recorded in the TON public blockchain as a property belonging to the owner of a certain crypto wallet.

It is also worth noting that TON offers a free, distributed and secure interface for developers to integrate collectibles into various platforms.

The acquired collectible item remains with the buyer forever (well, at least it is stated as such). The user can donate, sell or display it, as well as enjoy the benefits that this fact of “ownership” opens up.

The unique functionality associated with collectibles will depend on how each platform decides to support them. As you already understood, Fragment is very tightly integrated with Telegram.

OSINT broke into the chat…

But what interests us personally is that Fragment allows you to buy anonymous virtual numbers that can be used to register an account in Telegram without being tied to a SIM card.

A few words about the cost of beautiful names and anonymous virtual numbers.

At the time of writing, the minimum value of a phone number is 16 TONCoins, which is equivalent to $35.7, and the minimum value of a collectible name is 6 TONCoins, which is equal to $13.4.

At these direct buy prices, it’s not a sin to try your luck and participate in an auction where the initial bid for usernames or phone numbers is 2-3 TONCoins.

How to identify a user?

“Anonymous” virtual numbers, which, by the way, cannot be used to receive SMS or phone calls.

Collectible names are associated with the TON blockchain, and each of their purchases is recorded in this blockchain with the address of the owner’s crypto wallet, and the crypto wallet is associated with a Telegram profile.

Can you feel where OSIN’s wind blew from?

Let’s show with an example

Let’s choose a beautiful username on the Fragment platform, for example, @authorless.

We will see that this collectible name was sold for 10 TONCoin on January 13, 2023 at 12:13 pm to an auction participant with crypto wallet EQB7PUJhIVvd6A_i1-Qt8dBENN4w3AFAFZ0UMBN6QeKlCPQ-

Further, by clicking on the link in the TON browser to the account of the owner of the crypto wallet, you can see that the user also owns several NFTs and an anonymous virtual number +888 0716 2593

Now, opening this user in Telegram using the link https://t.me/authorlesswe have the opportunity to obtain additional information about his account, for example, ID – 62825385.

Knowing the account ID and using the data from the leaks, we get the mobile phone +798******** (for obvious reasons, we will not indicate the full phone number in the article) and other useful information about the owner of the Telegram account.

In this case, we took leaks as an example, as one of the possible quick methods for finding information. In fact, the classic OSINT starts with all its techniques and methods of information retrieval.

If during the research of the crypto wallet you are interested in it turns out that the collection name purchased by the owner is not assigned to a specific Telegram user, then you just need to wait and continue monitoring the actions of the owner of the crypto wallet in selling, buying, exchanging or converting collectibles, as well as assigning the Telegram name of interest to the user , channel or group.

This is how anonymity works. Let’s see what this platform will grow into in the future and whether it will be another temporary craze of our progressive Internet space, like NFT trading…