In this article
Your phone number is how you sign in. It does not have to be how people reach you, and on Telegram it usually should not be — because a number is the one thing about you that cannot be changed, and it is the identifier your bank, your delivery company and your account recovery all use.
A username separates the two. Then a handful of settings decide what a stranger in a group actually learns about you, and a couple of them do rather less than their names suggest.
What you will be able to do after this step
- check_circle Claim a username and hand out a link instead of a number.
- check_circle Close both phone-number gates — and know why there are two.
- check_circle Say what each privacy setting stops, and what it leaves untouched.
- check_circle Read your own profile the way a stranger sees it.
alternate_email The username is the whole trick
Claim one in Settings, under your profile, and you get an address: t.me/yourname. Anyone with it can start a conversation with you without ever seeing your number, and you can put it on a business card, a website, a CV or a public profile without handing out a line that rings.
It is also the part of your identity you are allowed to change. Numbers are sticky; usernames are not. If one attracts the wrong attention, you take a different one, and the problem is left behind with the old handle.
That freedom has a cost worth knowing before you use it. A released username is immediately available to somebody else, and every link to the old one — in other people's messages, in a channel description you cannot edit, printed on something — either breaks or leads to whoever took it. Choose one you can keep, and avoid putting a year, a job, or a project in it. Step 065 covers the longer-term handling of handles.
password There are two phone-number settings, not one
This is the part almost everybody gets half right. Under Privacy and Security, the phone number section holds two separate questions, and closing one does nothing about the other.
Who can see my phone number controls whether the digits are displayed on your profile. Setting it to Nobody is the obvious move and most people make it.
Who can find me by my number is the one that matters more, and it becomes relevant only once the first is closed. It controls whether somebody who already has your number — from a leaked list, a contact database, a form you filled in years ago — can type it into their phone and find your account. Left open, hiding the number on your profile achieves very little: the connection between the number and you is still discoverable from the other direction.
Set the first to Nobody and the second to My Contacts. That combination is what actually breaks the link, and it takes about fifteen seconds.
rule What each setting actually does
Most of these have a gap between what the name suggests and what happens. The third column is the one worth reading.
| Setting | Worth setting to | What it stops | What it does not stop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who can see my phone number | Nobody | The digits appearing on your profile to people you meet in groups. | People who already saved your number from seeing it in their own contacts. |
| Who can find me by my number | My Contacts | A stranger with a list of numbers matching one of them to your account. | Anyone already in your contacts, which is the point of the setting. |
| Last seen and online | My Contacts, or Nobody | Strangers watching when you are awake, at work, or asleep. | Your own view of other people's exact times — this one is reciprocal. |
| Forwarded messages | My Contacts | Your name in a forwarded quote being a link back to your profile. | Your name being shown, or somebody stripping it and quoting you as an unnamed source. |
| Calls, peer-to-peer | My Contacts, or Never | A stranger learning roughly where you are from a call you answered. | Anything about who may call you — that is the separate setting above it. |
| Who can add me to groups | My Contacts | Being dropped into a channel of strangers without being asked. | An invitation link arriving as a message, which is the polite alternative anyway. |
Two of these deserve a sentence more. Last seen is reciprocal: hide yours and you stop seeing other people's precise times as well, receiving only a vague indication. That is the trade, it is symmetrical, and Step 029 examines whether it is worth it.
Forwarding privacy is often misread. With it closed, your name still appears above a forwarded quote — it simply stops being a tappable link to your profile. Anyone forwarding your message can also choose to remove the attribution entirely, which is their decision and not yours. What the setting buys is that being quoted does not become a route to your account; it is not anonymity. Step 049 covers forwarding from the other side.
touch_app Try it now — five minutes
The settings above in the order that gets the most out of the least effort.
- Claim a username Settings, then your profile. Pick something you can keep for years and that reads well aloud — you will be spelling it to people. Then put it where your number currently lives.
- Close both phone-number gates Privacy and Security, then Phone Number. Nobody for the first, My Contacts for the second. This is the highest-value pair on the whole screen.
- Set last seen, forwarding and calls All in the same section, all to My Contacts unless you have a reason otherwise. None of them makes the app harder to use.
- Look at your own profile as a stranger Telegram can show you your profile as somebody outside your contacts sees it. Read the name, the photograph and the description with the question: what does this tell a person who does not know me? Step 033 covers the photograph, which is usually where more is revealed than intended.
badge What your profile says when you are not there
Settings are only half of it. Your name, photograph and description are shown to everybody who meets you in a group, and they are written by you rather than governed by a switch.
The description in particular is an unverified claim. "Administrator of a large channel" reads as authority and proves nothing, which is precisely why impersonators copy real ones word for word. Writing less in it is usually the better choice, and treating other people's as unconfirmed is always the better habit.
The photograph deserves the same look. A picture in front of a house, in a uniform, or beside a car with a visible plate says more than a face does. It is also visible to anyone who can find your profile, which after this step is a narrower group than it was — but not an empty one.
An empty profile is its own signal, though: no photograph and no name reads as a bot or a throwaway account, and people are slower to answer one. Something neutral and deliberate is better than nothing.
help Common questions at this stage
If I hide my number, can my existing friends still find me?
Yes. Anyone who has your number saved in their phone already sees you as a contact, and nothing here changes that — My Contacts is the setting that keeps it working. What closes is the path from a number somebody obtained elsewhere to your account. In practice people notice no difference at all, which is why this is the easiest security change in the curriculum to recommend.
Can I use Telegram without any phone number?
Not for an ordinary account — registration requires one. What exists is a separate kind of number you can obtain that is not tied to a carrier, which some people use so that no telephone company holds the link to their account. It is a real option with real trade-offs, including the fact that losing access to it is unrecoverable, and Step 090 treats it properly. For nearly everyone, the two settings on this page solve the problem they actually have.
Somebody is using a username almost identical to mine. What can I do?
Report the account, and tell the people who matter what your real handle is rather than describing it. The practical defence is a link people can click: publish your t.me address on a site you control, and point anyone uncertain at that rather than asking them to compare spellings from memory. In groups you run, pin a message giving your exact handle — impersonation of admins in the comments is a recurring pattern, and it works because members have nothing authoritative to check against.
Does hiding my last seen make me look rude?
It can, among people who read it as evasion, and that is a genuine cost rather than a paranoid one. The reciprocity is the sharper part: you also stop seeing exactly when they were online, which some people miss. My Contacts is the setting that resolves most of this — friends see the information they are used to, strangers in groups get nothing. Step 029 goes through the variations, including the option of hiding it from specific people.
Can I change my username later without losing anything?
Your chats, groups, channels and settings are all untouched — they belong to the account, not to the handle. What you lose is every existing link to the old one, and the old one becomes available for anyone to claim within moments. That is manageable if you announce it; it is a problem if the handle is printed on something, or sitting in a channel description somebody else controls. Treat a change as a small migration rather than an edit.
Do these settings apply on all my devices?
Yes. Privacy settings belong to the account, so changing them on a phone changes them on a laptop, a tablet and the web at once — unlike storage and notification settings, which are per device. That is worth remembering in the other direction too: a setting you loosened once on a machine you no longer own is still loose everywhere. Reviewing this screen after Step 008's device audit is a sensible pairing.
At a glance
- 1Username, not number
Share your @username or t.me link instead of your phone number.
- 2Two number settings
Who can see my number, and who can find me by it: close both.
- 3A stranger's view
Check what non-contacts see on your profile before you rely on it.
Updated
