Telegram FAQ

Yes. You can always delete any messages you sent or received for both sides in any one-on-one conversation (in groups, it’s still your own messages only). You can also clear the entire chat history on both ends. On Telegram, deleted messages do not leave a mark in the chat.

Together with privacy settings for forwarded messages, this makes exchanging Telegram messages similar to talking face to face (without a tape recorder). As a result, users no longer need to worry about the data accumulating in their chats over the years. Both parties in a conversation have full control over what does and what doesn’t belong to their online identity.

People Nearby is an optional feature that allows Telegram users to explore local groups, find friends to chat with in their area, or quickly exchange contacts with people who are close.

You can find it in Contacts > Find People Nearby, as well as directly in the side menu on Android.

While you have the People Nearby section open on your screen, people who are very close will be able to see you there. If you don’t open the section, others will never see you in ‘People Nearby’.

You can also choose to permanently add your profile to the list of nearby people by tapping Make Myself Visible. After becoming visible, you can remove your profile from the list at any time by tapping Stop Showing Me.

Note: People Nearby is never turned on by default – users must manually enable it. If you are receiving messages from someone you don’t know, see Q: Who can contact me?

The last seen rules apply to your online status as well. People can only see you online if you’re sharing your last seen status with them.

There are some exceptions because sometimes it is obvious that you are online. Regardless of the last seen settings, people will see you online for a brief period (~30 seconds) if you do the following:

• Send them a message in a one-on-one chat or in a group where you both are members.
• Read a message they sent you in a one-on-one chat.
• Broadcast a “typing…” status to their chat with you or to a group where you both are members.

If you’re not sharing your last seen timestamp with someone and don’t do anything of the above, they’ll never see you online. Another way of achieving this is to block that person.

You can choose who sees this info in Privacy and Security settings.

Remember that you won’t see Last Seen timestamps for people with whom you don’t share your own. You will, however, see an approximate last seen value. This keeps stalkers away but makes it possible to understand whether a person is reachable over Telegram. There are four possible approximate values:

• Last seen recently — covers anything between 1 second and 2-3 days
• Last seen within a week — between 2-3 and seven days
• Last seen within a month — between 6-7 days and a month
• Last seen a long time ago — more than a month (this is also always shown to blocked users)

One check — message delivered to the Telegram cloud and your friend has been notified if he allows notifications.
Two checks — message read (your friend opened Telegram and opened the conversation with the message).

We don’t have a ‘delivered to device’ status for messages because Telegram can run on as many devices as you want. So which particular one would that check mean?

iOS: The basic invitations are simple SMS messages. They will be charged as standard outgoing SMS by your carrier (unless sent via iMessage). Naturally, you have other options to bring your friends here. Try sending them a download link via any other messaging service: email, Facebook, WhatsApp, an actual telegram — you name it. The link: https://telegram.org/dl/

Android: Open the app menu (swipe right in chat list) > Invite Friends. Then choose an application via which you would like to send out invitations.

You can give your friends a t.me link with your username so that they can easily find you on Telegram even if they don’t have your phone number.

Your contacts, who have Telegram, are shown at the top of your Contacts. They also have pictures.

People can contact you on Telegram if they know your phone number or if you message them first.

If they don’t know your phone number, they can find you in these cases:

• When you both are members of the same group.
• If you set a public username. Others can use Global Search and find you by your username.
• If you opt-in to appear in the People Nearby section (this is turned off by default).

You can write to people who are in your phone contacts and have Telegram. Another way of contacting people is to type their Telegram username into the search field – you don’t need to know their phone number to do this.

Secret chats use end-to-end encryption, thanks to which we don’t have any data to disclose.

To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. The relevant decryption keys are split into parts and are never kept in the same place as the data they protect. As a result, several court orders from different jurisdictions are required to force us to give up any data.

Thanks to this structure, we can ensure that no single government or block of like-minded countries can intrude on people’s privacy and freedom of expression. Telegram can be forced to give up data only if an issue is grave and universal enough to pass the scrutiny of several different legal systems around the world.

To this day, we have disclosed 0 bytes of user data to third parties, including governments.