In this article
- link One link is the problem
- rule Four controls, four jobs
- query_stats Naming links is the cheapest analytics there is
- person_check The single-use link, and what it is really for
- touch_app Try it now — five minutes
- preview The link is showing people your room before they join
- help Common questions at this stage
- At a glance
Most rooms have exactly one invitation link, created on the day they were made and pasted everywhere since. It works, which is why nobody thinks about it — and it is why, the day it leaks, there is nothing to do about it.
A link can carry an expiry, a limit on how many people it admits, a name, and the approval queue from Step 064. This step is what each of those controls is actually for, and why having several links is easier than having one.
What you will be able to do after this step
- check_circle Create a link that stops working on its own.
- check_circle Hand somebody a link that admits them and nobody else.
- check_circle See which route your members actually arrived through.
- check_circle Revoke a leaked link without disturbing anybody already inside.
link One link is the problem
The single permanent link is convenient right up to the moment it becomes a liability, and it becomes one in a predictable way.
It gets pasted into a message that gets forwarded. It ends up in somebody's notes, then in a list of communities, then on a site that collects such lists. Arrivals appear who have no connection to anybody you know, and you cannot tell where they came from because there is only one door and it does not keep a record you can interpret.
At that point revoking it is the obvious move and also a painful one, because that same link is in your website footer, in the description of two other rooms, on a poster, and in four hundred old messages. Killing it breaks all of them at once.
The alternative is not more security. It is several links, each with a job, so that any one of them can die without taking the others with it.
rule Four controls, four jobs
Each of these is set when the link is made and can be changed afterwards. The last column is the one worth reading, because every control has a way of going wrong that nobody anticipates.
| Control | What it does | Use it for | How it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| An expiry | Stops working after a time you choose. | Anything tied to an occasion — an event, a course, a hiring round. | It expires while the poster is still on the wall. Physical things need the handle instead. |
| A usage limit | Admits a set number of people, then closes. | Handing access to one named person, or to a known group of twelve. | One person opening it twice, or forwarding it, uses somebody else's place. |
| A name | Labels the link for you. Invisible to the people using it. | Knowing which route people came through, with no tracking of any kind. | Unnamed links accumulate until you cannot tell them apart and are afraid to revoke any. |
| Approval required | Puts arrivals in the queue from Step 064 instead of admitting them. | The link you post publicly, while personal invitations stay direct. | Nobody reads the queue, and the door is closed without anybody deciding to close it. |
The two can be combined in the way that matters most: a permanent, named link for the places you control, and a short-lived one for anywhere you cannot take something back. Your website gets the first. A message in somebody else's group gets the second.
query_stats Naming links is the cheapest analytics there is
A link's name exists only for you — the person using it sees nothing different. But the log in Step 059 records joins against the link they came through, so naming turns your doors into a count of where members actually come from.
Make one for each place you publish: the site, the newsletter, the talk you gave, the other community that agreed to mention you. A month later you know which of those produced people, and the answer is routinely not the one anybody expected.
It is worth being clear about why this is better than the usual approach. There are no parameters appended to the URL, nothing is added to anybody's browser, and no third party is involved — the counting happens because Telegram already knows which door somebody walked through. You are reading a fact rather than tracking a person.
The same records answer a security question in one glance. Forty accounts arriving through one link in ten minutes is a pattern you can see immediately, and the response is narrow: revoke that link. Everybody who joined legitimately through the others is untouched.
person_check The single-use link, and what it is really for
A link limited to one person is the closest thing to a key. It is worth a section because people reach for it in the wrong situations and miss the right ones.
It suits a handover. Giving one person access to a private room — a new colleague, a client, somebody who paid. The link admits them and dies, so it does not matter if it stays in their messages for years.
It does not suit a small group. A link capped at twelve for a team of twelve will be used by nine of them and two other people who were forwarded it, and the last three will find a dead link and have to ask. Either make twelve separate links or use a higher cap and revoke it afterwards.
It is not an identity check. Whoever holds the link gets in, which may not be the person you sent it to. Where that matters, the approval queue from Step 064 is the layer that lets you see who actually arrived before they can read anything.
One practical note that catches everybody: a person who taps the link, then leaves the room, has used it. They cannot rejoin, and from their side it looks as though you removed them.
touch_app Try it now — five minutes
Four steps, and the first one is the one most communities have never done.
- Open the invite links list in a room you run In the members area of the settings. Read how many there are, who made them, and how many people each one brought in.
- Name the ones that are still in use Where each is published. From now on the log tells you which door people came through.
- Revoke anything you cannot identify Nobody is removed and nobody is notified. An unidentifiable link is one you can never safely kill later.
- Make a short-lived link the next time you post one anywhere public A day, or a week. It costs nothing and it means that particular paste cannot circulate indefinitely.
preview The link is showing people your room before they join
Pasting an invitation link anywhere produces a card: the room's name, its photograph, and how many members it has. That happens before anybody taps, and it happens for private rooms too.
This catches people out in both directions. A private group posted into a public channel has just announced its existence, its name and its size to everybody reading — which may be exactly what you wanted, and may be the opposite. If a room's name is the giveaway, that is a reason to think about the name as well as the link.
In the other direction, the card is the only sales material a link has. Somebody deciding whether to tap sees a name, a picture and a number, so all three are doing work. A generic picture and a name that means nothing outside your circle produce a card people scroll past, and no amount of link hygiene fixes that.
Two habits follow. Look at your own card by pasting the link into a chat with yourself — most owners have never seen what their room looks like from outside. And when the member count is small, expect that to matter: a card showing eleven members reads as a room that has not started, which is a reason to grow a little before posting the link widely rather than after.
help Common questions at this stage
What does somebody see when they open a dead link?
A message saying the link is no longer valid. It does not say whether it expired, was used up, or was revoked, and it does not reveal anything about the room. That is good for privacy and awkward for a person who was genuinely invited, so if you use expiring links for real invitations it is worth saying in the message that the link is time-limited.
Can I see who joined through a particular link?
Yes — the link's own screen shows the members who came through it, and the log from Step 059 records the joins as events. For a single-use link that means you can confirm the right person arrived. For a campaign link it is how you learn that the channel everybody assumed was working brought in four people.
Who can create links in my group?
Anybody with the invite permission from Step 058, and each administrator's links are listed separately. That separation is useful: when a moderator leaves, their links can be revoked as a group without touching yours. It is also a reason to check the list occasionally, since a link made by somebody who is no longer involved is still a working door.
Does a link work for a public room that already has a handle?
Yes, and it is worth doing precisely because the handle cannot be measured. People arriving by handle are invisible as a group; people arriving through a named link are counted. Many public communities run both — the handle everywhere permanent, named links in specific places — which gives them the durability of one and the attribution of the other.
Can I change a link's settings after making it?
Yes. Expiry, limit and name can be edited, and the link itself stays the same, which means you can extend something that is about to expire without reissuing it to everybody. The one thing you cannot do is un-revoke: a killed link is gone permanently, and anybody still holding it needs a new one.
Is there any risk in having many links?
Only the risk of forgetting what they are, which is why naming matters more than the count. Each link is an independent door, so more of them is more granular control rather than more exposure — the exposure comes from a door nobody remembers opening. A list of eight named links is far safer than one anonymous link in circulation.
At a glance
- 1Expiring links
Set an end date or a member limit when you create a link.
- 2One-person links
A link for a single join admits that person and no one else.
- 3Revoke safely
Revoking a leaked link removes no one already inside.
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