AnarchistSpaceDad on Nostr: I believe I've mentioned this before, but there's no way to prevent people from ...

I believe I've mentioned this before, but there's no way to prevent people from associating your phone number with your username on Telegram, regardless of your settings. Public claims that your phone number is only used for authentication are bullshit. Even if you have "find me by my phone number" set to "nobody" and never sync your contacts, someone else who syncs their contacts and has you in their contact list can find you. I had this happen to me despite never having granted Telegram permission to access my contacts.

My guess is that this is deliberate, because if you could truly keep your phone number private, their blockchain-based phone number service that's available to non-US users would be worthless.