Over the course of the last two years in the EOSIO space, our team has been active in Telegram and operated a number of channels based on our projects. It’s always been a bit of a pain to operate and had its problems own set of unique problems - but recently the situation within Telegram has become unacceptable from a security point of view. Many popular EOSIO telegram channels (including ours) are now plagued with invisible and industrialized “phishing” operations in an attempt to steal from users seeking help.
There’s not much as an organization we can do to combat this threat on Telegram. These malicious actors are now private messaging every new member that joins our channels. They do so using fake accounts that look nearly identical to members of our team and other prominent members of the community. They then either phish credentials, steal private keys, or direct these new users to malicious websites with intent to steal either their data or assets.
Being powerless to combat this, as it’s all happening out of our sight, we have decided we are going to shut down our Telegram channels and move all of our regular and public communications to this forum. We won’t be leaving Telegram as individual users, we will still participate in other public channels (while they exist), but will be encouraging everyone to migrate here.
Within these forums, not only will we be able to support our users without them being threatened, but the forums will also:
- Let Google and other search indexes index our content. So much useful information has been lost in Telegram!
- Move into threaded discussions based on topics and organize everything more easily.
- Create a home for potential guides, tutorials, and other educational materials.
It’s far from a perfect solution, and who knows how long we’ll operate on this platform - but it solves the problems we are facing today.
We don’t have specific long term goals behind launching this platform and are open to working with others to create a better community within EOSIO. If you have ideas or want to help contribute somehow, let us know!