De-anonymization of Messenger Owners Through P2P Connections

Imagine yourself as a developer of an instant messaging app with voice communication capabilities (similar to Telegram). You have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, developed both client and server parts, created a modern website, and are now entering the market with your solution, ready to invest even more hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising.

You have rented servers in data centers located in various parts of the world (even if you decided to start modestly, servers will definitely be needed in Europe, Asia, and America), and hired a staff that needs to be regularly paid.

And now you have launched, finding yourself in a market where you face tough competition from other messengers, including WhatsApp, Viber, Signal, Skype, and Telegram.

How do users choose communication tools for business and personal communications? In my opinion, there are four main criteria: prevalence, security, convenience, and quality. Let's talk about quality.

Suppose Ivan from Novosibirsk and Sergey from Ufa are using your messenger. Ivan sends a message to Sergey, and it travels as encrypted data from Novosibirsk to a data center in Europe or Asia and then from there to Ufa to Sergey.

The message travels almost halfway around the globe, or even more, if we assume that Sergey's app is working through a proxy server in the USA. The delivery speed will depend not only on the distance between the interlocutors but also on the network load; however, when sending text messages, this is hardly noticeable.

But then Ivan and Sergey decide to communicate via voice, where the speed and quality of data delivery seriously affect the quality of the connection. In this case, they simply won't be able to have a proper conversation: the sound will be interrupted, and there will be delays. Who do you think Sergey and Ivan will blame? The distance? Their misunderstanding of the messenger's architecture? No, they will blame your messenger and switch to a competitor.

You wonder what to do and conclude that the best solution is to eliminate your servers, and even better, all the proxies indicated in the app, if such an option is available to you.

Knowing the IP addresses of the interlocutors, it is not difficult to connect them directly, excluding your server; this is called a P2P connection. All genius is simple. Now the data does not travel around the world but only a little over 2000 km (by the most modest estimates, Ufa – Amsterdam – Novosibirsk is more than 9500 km).