A date of birth can sit on your profile, and the people whose dates you can see turn up in a list on the day. Telegram will also offer to send them something.
It is a small feature that quietly creates an obligation, and both halves of that are worth thinking about before switching it on.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Add a birthday and control who sees it.
- check_circle Find whose birthday it is today.
- check_circle Decide whether the reminders help you.
- check_circle Understand why a public date is a risk.
The date sits on the profile with its own audience setting, separate from everything else.
cake A date is an identity document
Of all the ordinary details people publish about themselves, a date of birth is the one most useful to somebody pretending to be them. It is asked for as an identity check by banks, delivery firms and support desks, and it is permanent.
So the visibility setting is the part of this feature that matters. It has its own control — everybody, contacts, or nobody — and contacts is the right answer for almost everyone. Friends still get the reminder; the open internet does not get a piece of your identity.
Worth knowing that this cuts both ways: the people whose dates appear to you are the ones who both filled it in and let contacts see it. A short list usually means your friends were careful rather than that nobody has a birthday.
The other half is what the list does to you. Seeing five names every morning is pleasant for a week and then becomes a duty: a stream of people you half know, each apparently owed a message. Nobody minds not hearing from a distant acquaintance; the list invents the expectation.
Four decisions
The last one is the one the feature is quietly pushing you towards.
lock Contacts, and no further
calendar_month What it is good for
edit Specific or not at all
card_giftcard Being offered a purchase
Set it to contacts, pick your own dozen, and write something specific rather than clearing a queue.
settings Setting it up
- Add the date in your profile settings Or leave it out entirely.
- Set its audience to contacts It has a control of its own.
- Skip the year if your client allows That is the part identity checks use.
- Find the birthday list It appears with the contacts whose dates you can see.
- Write to the few you mean it for Not to everybody on the list.
- Ignore the gift prompt unless you had already decided It arrives at a persuadable moment.
This page adds one personal detail. The curriculum step is the rest of them: your number, your photograph, when you were last online, and which of these are worth publishing at all.
At a glance
- 1Add a birthday
Choose who sees it; you can leave out the year.
- 2Birthday list
See contacts' birthdays and get reminders.
- 3Identity risk
Birthdays are used to verify identity elsewhere.
Updated
