Frequently Asked Questions

Telegram is free and stays free. It was financed for most of its history by founder Pavel Durov personally, and it has since added forms of monetisation…

Privacy on the internet comes down to two separate promises, and they are often confused with one another. One is that your conversations stay between…

GDPR came into force across Europe on 25 May 2018 , and Telegram had little to change. The regulation requires what the service was built around: not…

Use the Report button, which is built into every Telegram app and takes a few taps. For bulk or formal requests there is also an automated takedown…

Regulation (EU) 2021/784, adopted on 29 April 2021 and known as the Terrorist Content Online Regulation , lets authorities in EU member states issue…

Send a complaint to dmca@telegram.org . This applies to Telegram's public platform: channels, public groups, bots and sticker sets. Private chats and…

Yes, for illegal public content : sticker sets, bots, groups and channels that anyone can reach. This is necessary both to serve users in the places…

Write to abuse@telegram.org and explain the situation. If the ban affects a bot specifically, @BotSupport is the faster route. Appeals are read by…

For Secret Chats there is nothing to disclose , because end-to-end encryption means no readable copy exists on any server. For cloud chats, the…

You can write to anyone you can identify, and there are several ways to identify them. A phone number is only one of them, and increasingly the least used.

Someone can contact you if they know your phone number , or if you message them first . Without your number, there are two further routes, and both are…

Contacts who already use Telegram appear at the top of your Contacts list , above everyone else, and they usually have a profile photo. Telegram…

There is a built-in invite flow on each platform, but the most reliable method on any of them is simply sending someone the link …

One check means delivered . Two checks mean read . There is no separate "delivered to device" state, and that absence is deliberate.

Yes. Choose who sees it under Settings, Privacy and Security, Last Seen and Online . There is one condition attached, and it is deliberate.

The same people who can see your last seen time can see when you are online. It is one setting, not two, and it is under Settings, Privacy and Security.

Yes, and more thoroughly than most people expect. In a one-to-one chat you can delete any message, including ones the other person sent , for both…

Yes, and all of it is end-to-end encrypted . Voice calls, video calls and group calls with up to 200 participants are covered, and the encryption on a…

Yes. That is what channels are for, and they have no subscriber limit. A channel is a one-way feed: administrators post, and everybody else reads.

Type an emoji from your keyboard's emoji panel, or open the sticker and emoji panel inside Telegram next to the message field. Both insert into the…

Groups hold up to 200,000 members , and the surrounding tools are built for communities at that scale rather than for a slightly larger chat.

A group is a conversation. A channel is a broadcast. That single difference decides which one you want, and almost everything else follows from it.

Groups are created from the new message button. The exact wording differs slightly across platforms, but the sequence is the same everywhere: start a…

Yes. You can appoint administrators and set exactly which powers each one gets , rather than handing over full control. This is the single most useful…

Add people from your contacts, search for them by username, or send an invite link . For anything beyond a handful of people, the invite link is the…

Not inside the channel itself. A channel is a broadcast, so only administrators can post there. Conversation happens in a discussion group linked to the…

A username is a public name for your account. Once set, people can find you by searching it, and you appear under global results. They can then message…

Collectible usernames behave exactly like ordinary ones in Telegram. The difference is ownership : a collectible username is a permanent asset recorded…

Once you set a username, Telegram gives you a web address. Both t.me/username and username.t.me work, and opening either on a phone launches the…

A username may contain letters a to z, digits 0 to 9, and underscores . It must be five to thirty-two characters long and must begin with a letter.…

No, a username is optional. Telegram works completely without one. What it changes is how people reach you , and for most people that turns out to be…

No. Replying to someone who found you by username does not reveal your phone number. The username exists precisely so that people can reach you without it.

Open your profile settings, clear the username field, and save an empty value. The username is released immediately and your t.me link stops resolving…

It depends which kind of username it is. Telegram has basic usernames, handed out first come first served, and collectible usernames, which are owned…

Report the account to @NoToScam , the team that handles impersonation and scam reports. Send the impersonator's username or profile link and screenshots…

Telegram encrypts everything, but not all chats are encrypted in the same way, and the difference decides what the answer means for you. Secret Chats…

Then use the tools built for exactly that, and understand what each one actually does. Being cautious is not the same as being helpless; it is a matter…

Telegram uses two layers of encryption , and which layers apply depends on the kind of chat. Cloud chats use server-client encryption. Secret Chats add…

The better question is what you can check instead of trusting , and Telegram is built so that the answer is: quite a lot. The source code, the protocol…

It depends on which kind of chat you mean, and the honest answer differs for each. Secret Chats require no trust in Telegram at all. Cloud chats require…

Then they are welcome to prove it. Telegram runs a cracking contest with a prize of $300,000 for anyone who can actually decipher messages, alongside an…

No, and it is worth being precise about where the protection ends. Telegram secures data in transit and communication between people . It cannot secure…

Two-step verification adds a password on top of the SMS login code . With it enabled, signing in requires both, so a code alone is not enough for…

Rooting or jailbreaking removes the operating system's own boundaries between applications. Once those are gone, no application can protect its data …

Cocoon is a secure, open-source and decentralised platform for running AI models . Telegram built it, and uses it to power its own AI features without…

No. Telegram's own AI features run on Cocoon and never send data to a third party. Processing happens inside an isolated, encrypted environment where…

Telegram's AI features run on Cocoon , a secure, open-source, decentralised AI platform that Telegram built for exactly this purpose. The question of…

Secret Chats are for conversations that need more secrecy than the default . Everything in them is end-to-end encrypted, so only you and the recipient…

Open the profile of the person you want to talk to, tap the menu, and choose Start Secret Chat . It opens as a separate conversation alongside your…

The Self-Destruct Timer removes a message from both devices once the time runs out. It is available for all messages in Secret Chats , and for media in…

No, and no messenger can promise otherwise. Telegram makes every effort to alert you when a screenshot is taken in a Secret Chat, but on some platforms…

When a Secret Chat is created, the two devices agree a shared key directly using a Diffie-Hellman key exchange . Telegram then renders that key as a…

Because end-to-end encryption has no good answer to a lost phone, and the answers other messengers chose are worse than they look. All Telegram messages…

By default, only people you have saved as contacts can see your number. You can message anyone in private chats and groups without exposing it, and you…

Each phone number is a separate Telegram account , so what to do depends on whether the old number is gone for good or you intend to use both.

Most people never need to. Signing out is rarely the answer to the problem that prompts it, and on Telegram it has a specific cost: it destroys every…

You can move your account to a new number and keep everything : contacts, messages, media in the cloud, and even your Secret Chats on every device.…

Account deletion is done on the deactivation page on telegram.org, not inside the app. It permanently removes all your messages and contacts , must be…

Everything held on your account is removed from Telegram: all messages, groups and contacts associated with it . The deletion is irreversible. There are…

If you stop using Telegram entirely, the account deletes itself after a period of inactivity. The default is 18 months , and you can shorten it in…

Yes. Most of your data can be removed while the account stays exactly as it is, and the controls are more thorough than people expect.

A phone number is the only way an account is identified, and nothing else is collected about you. That has a blunt consequence: whoever controls the…

Profile Rating is a numerical badge on a profile, based on the total volume of successful Telegram Stars transactions that account has made. It is a…

A passkey lets you sign in to Telegram the same way you unlock your device , with a PIN or with biometrics such as a fingerprint or face recognition. It…

A frozen account is one that has been restricted after reports from other users . While it is frozen you can still read your chats, but you cannot send…

A bot is a Telegram account operated by software rather than a person. You open a chat with it exactly as you would with anyone else, and it answers…

Register the bot with @BotFather , then write the code that answers its messages. Registration takes about a minute. The code is the part that requires…

Open the chat with the bot and use Stop Bot , or block it. Either one ends the messages immediately, and neither requires you to contact anyone.

Yes, in the sense that matters technically: a bot sees no more about you than any stranger in a group does . What it can see is your public name, your…

It depends on the bot's privacy mode , and Telegram shows you which one applies. By default a bot sees only messages meant for it. Some bots need more…

No. Almost every bot on Telegram is built by an independent developer using the open Bot API . Telegram maintains the platform the bots run on and a…

Mini apps are full applications that run inside Telegram . Outside developers build them on top of the bot platform, and they can have their own…

No, and the reasoning is worth following, because "open source the server" sounds like it would help more than it does. All client apps are fully open…

No. Telegram is a single unified cloud and does not support federation, so there is no supported way to run your own server and have it interoperate.

Yes. The protocol, the client API and the client source code are all open, and developers on any platform are welcome to use them. There are two…

Yes. The policy is published in full at telegram.org/privacy , and unlike most policies of its kind it is written to be read rather than to be scrolled…

The privacy sheet is the summary Apple shows on every App Store listing, describing what categories of data an app may collect. It is a category list…

Both are official. They exist because two different independent developers built Telegram clients for macOS, and Telegram adopted both rather than…

Yes. Telegram's translations are run by the community through an open localisation platform, where anyone can suggest wordings and vote on the…

Yes. The most direct way is the Telegram Support Initiative , a volunteer programme that answers user questions in their own language. If you want to…

The usual cause is the number format. Telegram needs it in full international form , which means the country code first and no leading zero on the local…

Telegram can dictate the login code in an automated phone call, but only for accounts that have two-step verification switched on . This is a deliberate…

If you have recently used Telegram on another device , the login code is sent inside Telegram rather than by SMS. Check any device where you are still…

Notification problems are nearly always the operating system rather than Telegram, and on Android they are usually battery management. Work through the…

Contacts that appear as bare numbers, or do not appear at all, are almost always a sync problem rather than a lost account. The fix is to make Telegram…

Delete the contact from their profile in Telegram, then delete them from your phone's contacts as well . If you only do the first, Telegram's contact…

Secret Chats live on the two devices that created them and nowhere else. They are not in the cloud, which is why they do not appear on your other…

This limit is applied to accounts that other users have reported for unwanted messages . While it is active, you can only message people who have your…

Some people charge a small fee, paid in Telegram Stars , for messages from anyone not in their contacts. This is a Star Message , and it exists to make…

Telegram can use the microphone in the background, and there is a normal reason for it. It does not use the camera in the background, even though some…

A Telegram account has no setting for choosing a country. What looks like your country comes from your phone number's country code.

One message holds 4,096 characters on a free account and 32,768 with Premium. Over the limit, the app splits the text and sends the rest as another message.