Let's move on to the privacy settings in the messenger, which is considered one of the most private - in Telegram. As in other chapters, we remove accessibility and, if possible, set maximum levels, commenting on their purpose and associated risks.
Go to the settings, the "Privacy" section. Let's start with the subsection of the same name.
Telegram makes it possible to flexibly manage whitelists and blacklists for access to your data. For items in this subsection, you can hide information from everyone or show it to everyone, or use your contacts list. It is also possible to add point-by-point exceptions in the form of individual accounts or all people belonging to certain groups.
Contacts at the moment in Telegram are considered not only those accounts for which you know the phone (as it was earlier), but also accounts manually added to the contacts of the application. Therefore, you should not rely too much on the contact list in the settings - at least, there may already be extraneous numbers in your phone book, and it is easy to add contacts inside the application by mistake. Therefore, it is recommended to make an audit of the phone book or not share access to it at all. For more information, see the section accesses for mobile applications.
We set the option "Who sees my phone number" to "Nobody", otherwise any Telegram account in any chat will be able to see your phone number.
We also see that there is an option "Who can find me by number". This is one of Telegram's most valuable privacy settings. It was added solely because of the mass protests in Hong Kong and the discontent of the protesters because of the ease with which the police could disclose their numbers.
Unfortunately, so far this option has no "Nobody" value. We put this option in "My contacts", and now only accounts from your contacts will be able to add you by phone number. At the same time, we remember the limited trust in the contact group (see above).
There is a feature in the platform - restrictions on the time of the last activity (was N minutes ago on the network) act in two directions. We set the value to "Nobody", but remember that at the same time you will not be able to see the activity of other accounts. Fortunately, specific people can be added to exceptions if necessary and removed after verification.
Permission to add you to groups and channels has a limitation - you can't ban everyone, but you can only allow your contacts. There are also separate point bans for the option.
We set the option to "My contacts". At the same time, we remember the limited trust in the contact group (see above).
Anti-spam in Telegram works well, so calls from spammers are quite rare. Also, fortunately, the call itself does not disclose any information about you if Peer-to-peer mode is not enabled. In this mode, Telegram establishes a direct connection from your device to the interlocutor's device, and it becomes possible to determine the IP address.
We set "Who can call me" to "My contacts" if you are ready to manually add accounts to contacts and monitor their "cleanliness". We set the "Peer To Peer" option to "Nobody".
When this option is enabled, other accounts lose the ability to see your avatar. This rather useful option is also limited by the access level of contacts, but can also be enabled manually for specific accounts.
We set the option to "My contacts". At the same time, we remember the limited trust in the contact group (see above).
From a certain version of Telegram, I learned to remove the link to the author for forwarded (forward) messages. Thus, even if your message is copied to another chat, it will be impossible to access your profile through it. Previously, this allowed tracking accounts that left at least one message in any chat.
We set the option "Who can link to my account when forwarding messages" to the value "Nobody".