In this article
- cell_tower What the offer is
- person_search Why the number is the real cost
- paid The two costs that are easy to skip past
- devices Who cannot be affected by this at all
- touch_app Try it now — five minutes
- phone_android The other side of it: a code from an ordinary number
- help Common questions at this stage
- At a glance
On some Android phones, in some countries, Telegram has made an offer: let your handset send other people's login codes by text message, and get Premium without paying for it. It is presented the way a loyalty scheme is presented, and it is a real feature rather than a rumour.
It is off unless you switch it on, so for most readers this step is a two-minute check that ends in nothing. It is still worth understanding, because what the programme borrows is not spare capacity on your phone. It is your phone number.
What you will be able to do after this step
- check_circle Describe what the programme actually asks your handset to do.
- check_circle Explain why strangers end up seeing your personal number.
- check_circle Confirm it is off, in both of the places that matter.
- check_circle Say why iPhone, iPad and desktop readers have nothing to do here.
cell_tower What the offer is
When somebody signs in and asks for a code by text message, that message has to travel the last stretch over the telephone network, and that stretch costs money — more so across borders. Delivering a very large number of them is a running expense with no interesting engineering in it.
The peer-to-peer login programme moves that last stretch onto volunteers. You opt in on an Android phone, grant the app permission to send text messages, and from then on your handset occasionally sends an ordinary text to a stranger's number containing the code they just asked for. In return, your account is given Premium.
It is worth being precise about the shape of this, because people imagine something more abstract. You are not donating bandwidth, running a relay server, or lending idle processing. Your SIM card sends text messages to people you do not know, the same way it would if you had typed them yourself.
The offer, and the agreement
The left column is what happens if you never touch this. The right is what you take on in exchange for a subscription.
check_circle Leaving it off
rule Enrolling as a relay
A subscription can be bought and cancelled. A phone number that has arrived on a few hundred strangers' handsets cannot be called back — which is why the two columns are not a close comparison.
person_search Why the number is the real cost
The recipient of one of these messages did not ask you for anything and has no idea who you are. What they see is a code they were expecting, arriving from an ordinary mobile number rather than from the service they were signing into.
Some of them ignore it. Some reply to ask what this is. Some ring the number. And a proportion of people who receive an unexplained text from a stranger's number do the thing everybody is now told to do, which is to report it — to their carrier, to a fraud line, or by posting it publicly on one of the sites that collect suspicious numbers. None of those outcomes require anybody to be acting in bad faith. They are the normal, reasonable response to an unexplained message.
Set against that, remember what a phone number is used for outside this app. It is how your bank identifies you, how deliveries reach you, and how several of your accounts would be recovered if you lost the password. Step 009 is entirely about controlling who can see it inside Telegram. This feature hands it out on purpose, to people chosen by a queue.
paid The two costs that are easy to skip past
Your carrier bills you. Telegram's terms for the programme are explicit that message charges are yours. What that means in practice depends entirely on your plan, and plans are harder to read than they look. An allowance described as unlimited is usually unlimited within your own country, with fair-use wording that was written without automated sending in mind. If any part of the traffic goes abroad, or if your plan counts messages at all, the arithmetic can be unpleasant and you find out about it a month later.
Your carrier may object in a more serious way. Most consumer contracts contain a clause forbidding the use of the line as an automated messaging gateway, and the systems that enforce it are looking for exactly the pattern this creates: a handset sending a steady stream of short, similar messages to numbers it has never contacted. The outcome is a suspended line while somebody works out what happened.
A suspended line is not a small inconvenience. It is the thing your bank texts, the thing several of your accounts recover through, and — if you have not set up two-step verification as Step 008 describes — a route into this account as well.
devices Who cannot be affected by this at all
This is an Android question and only an Android question, which is worth saying plainly because the topic circulates as a general warning about Telegram.
iPhone and iPad. The setting does not exist. Apps on those systems cannot send text messages in the background on your behalf, so there is nothing to opt into and nothing to check.
Telegram Desktop, on any operating system. There is no cellular radio involved, so the same answer applies.
Most Android phones, too. The programme has only ever been offered in particular places. If you go looking for the setting and it is not there, that is the ordinary result and it means the answer to this step is already no.
touch_app Try it now — five minutes
Four steps, and on most phones you will stop after the first.
- Look for the setting Privacy and Security, alongside the other account controls. If there is no entry about sending login codes for other people, the programme is not offered on your account and you are finished.
- If it is there, read its current state rather than assuming Somebody else may have set up the phone, or you may have accepted an offer some time ago. Switch it off if it is on; leaving takes effect immediately.
- Take the text-message permission away at the system level Your Android settings, then Apps, then Telegram, then Permissions. Setting the SMS permission to refuse makes the question permanent instead of a single tap away, and costs you nothing — ordinary Telegram messaging does not use it.
- Look at one recent bill if you were ever enrolled Message counts on a statement are the only place the cost of this shows up, and you are checking for a number that surprises you rather than for a specific figure.
phone_android The other side of it: a code from an ordinary number
There is a version of this page nobody writes, which is what to do when you are the person receiving one of these messages. It is a genuinely confusing arrival: you asked Telegram for a code, and what turned up is a text from a mobile number belonging to a stranger.
The instinct is that something has gone wrong, and it is a reasonable instinct. In a region where the relay programme operates, this is simply how the message reached you and the code is legitimate. The rule that keeps you safe does not depend on telling those cases apart, which is the useful part: a code is only ever typed into the screen that asked for it, seconds earlier, on your own device. Where it arrived from changes nothing about that.
So the practical response is short. If you were signing in, use the code and ignore the sender. If you were not signing in, somebody is trying to get into your account and the message is your warning — do not reply, do not forward it, and go and check that two-step verification from Step 008 is switched on. Do not reply to the number in either case; there is nobody there who can explain it, only a handset that sent what it was asked to send.
help Common questions at this stage
Is this switched on by default when I install Telegram?
No. It requires a deliberate opt-in and then a separate permission granted through your phone's own settings, which the operating system will not give away silently. If you have never seen an offer about sending verification messages, you are not enrolled. The check in the steps above exists because phones get set up by other people and because an offer accepted a year ago is not something anybody remembers.
Can somebody who receives one of these messages write back to me?
Yes, and this is the part that surprises people. The text comes from your SIM, so replying to it sends a message to your phone and calling it makes your phone ring. There is no intermediary to absorb the confusion. The person on the other end is not doing anything wrong — they received an unexplained message from an unknown number and are responding to it in the most obvious way.
Does Telegram cover the charges if my carrier bills me?
No. The terms of the programme place message charges on the participant, and there is no reimbursement process. This is the reverse of how people read the offer: it looks like being paid in Premium for something free, when it is closer to buying a subscription with an amount of money that depends on your tariff and will not be known until the bill arrives.
Could I use a spare SIM or a second phone instead?
That removes the worst of the exposure, because the number handed to strangers is not the one your bank and your contacts use. It does not remove the carrier questions — the contract on that line still describes ordinary personal use — and it does not remove the possibility that the number ends up on public lists of numbers associated with unsolicited messages. Think of it as reducing what you stand to lose, not as making the arrangement neutral.
Does this mean my own login codes are being sent by strangers?
They may be delivered that way in the regions where the programme runs, and this is the one genuinely reassuring part of the topic. The code itself is generated and checked by Telegram; the volunteer's handset only carries it over the last stretch. The practical advice is unchanged and is the advice from every other step in this module: a code is for the screen that asked for it, and nobody who contacts you has a legitimate reason to want it.
I turned it off. Do I lose the Premium subscription I was given?
The subscription was tied to participating, so it ends when participating ends — immediately or at the end of the period it was granted for, depending on how it was issued. That is the correct way round to think about the whole arrangement: it was never a gift, it was payment for a service you were performing, and stopping the service stops the payment.
At a glance
- 1What it asks
Your SIM sends login codes to other people by SMS.
- 2Your number shows
Every recipient sees your personal number and may call or report it.
- 3Usually off
Most people should leave it off; check both places it can be enabled.
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