this isn’t really about OSM, it’s about how to protect our privacy while on a OSM-centered Telegram group. I manage the Comunidad OSM Panamá Telegram group, and since the Covid-19 struck worldwide, also our group started to be targeted by several types of scammers and spammers, so I looked for options to contrast the events and shield the users of the group from the nuisance.

Initially, I participated in the osmallgroups Rose federation, but I came in disagreement with the most active admins in the federation, as to how aggressively ban potential scammers. My point of view was that, at the first hint of suspicion the person has nothing to do with OSM, with the area, with geography, and is only looking for sources of Telegram user contact details, the correct action is to ban immediately, possibly contacting them with the invitation to tell me that they are legitimate OSM mappers. This was not the shared opinion in that Rose federation, so I left and developed the following protocol.

Each new member gets a message inviting them to mention their OSM user name, and are warned this is an anti-spam measure. Failure to comply results in ban within the first few hours. I then privately write to check the intentions of the user. Up to now I have not had a single false positive. In at least two occasions I saw the person joining and immediately leaving the group.

To reduce the impact of my instructions to Rose in the group, I use a “federation” and a parallel group, where I issue the /fban command to Rose. Rose reacts to that and removes the user from all other federated groups, that includes the Comunidad OSM Panamá. All that people in the real group will see is “Rose removed user Xxx”, something that happens without the Rose avatar. Soon after, this becomes “Rose removed DELETED”.

The other detail that needs to be mentioned, that’s Rose’s ability to log events to a channel. I need that in order to have the necessary user details to invoke the /fban command.

the only remaining problem with Rose is its avatar, which was initially very sexist, has been polished down, but is allegedly still offensive to some members of the OSM communities. Personally, I have no problem with it, and I have not heard direct complains for its presence in the Panama Group.