If you are taking online classes or have joined a large group on Telegram, then it is highly advisable to know certain privacy features to avoid getting harassed or being stalked. Recently, female students of Karnataka State Open University (KSOU) faced a tough time when their phone numbers became publicly available from Telegram groups meant for sharing study materials and assignments. Students complained that they got calls and messages from strangers seeking favours. In order to prevent incidents like this, KSOU officials changed privacy settings of their Telegram group to help students.
So, if you are new to Telegram and have recently made the shift from WhatsApp, here are some privacy settings you must know and apply.
Hide your phone number
You can chat on Telegram via user ID and without providing your phone number as well. So, if someone asks for your phone number to chat on Telegram, simply give them your user ID. It works like Twitter. You can create a unique ID for yourself by visiting your Telegram profile. After setting your user ID, go to Privacy and Security settings and change your Phone number settings to ‘Nobody’. With this, no one will be able to see your phone number on Telegram.
Decide who gets to see your profile photo
While you may not use a profile photo, there’s an option to decide who will get to see your photo. Under Privacy settings, change the Profile Photo option from ‘Everyone’ to ‘My Contacts’. You can also manually block people from seeing your profile photo too.
Disable calls from strangers
Under Privacy settings, you can disable calls altogether or select who gets to call you on Telegram. If you don’t want strangers to call you, simply select the ‘My Contacts’ option and don’t save the contact details of the stranger on your phone book.
You can stop people from sending you forwarded messages
Telegram offers a privacy setting which allows you to restrict people from sending you forwarded messages. If you are done with silly forwards, simply enable this option.
Decide who gets to add you to Telegram groups
under privacy, there’s a stting which allows you to choose whether everyone can add you to random groups or just people in your contact list
you can also block certain people from adding you to groups.
