Telegram is rising like foam these days as an alternative to WhatsApp that, among other differences, does not share data with Facebook and includes several additional privacy options, such as being able to use it by hiding your phone number. My experience is a bit different: every day I receive dozens of messages from strangers on Telegram, and there is little you can do about it.
I’ve been using Telegram along with other messaging apps since its inception, back in 2013, but it wasn’t until last year that I started getting messages from strangers. First, in Russian, then from all over the world, including porn, viruses, charlatans and various scams. And there is no option to avoid it that does not have a but.
welcome to my telegram
In the years that I have been using Telegram, the balance is positive. The app basically does the same thing as WhatsApp, but better in almost every way. I use it to chat both with other people and with myself, to save notes, links or send things from my mobile to my PC and vice versa. Everything was going well, until sometime in 2020, when I started getting messages from strangers.
At first, most of the messages were in Russian. Because of the novelty, I tried to answer some of them with the help of a translator, to try to understand what was happening, but without much success. After what a dozen Russians wrote me messages about kettlesI came to the conclusion that it was some kind of pun in Russian, based on my name -Ivan- and inspired by some TikTok video.
Three different people, all of them Russian, are trying to sell me teapots/kettles on Telegram. I already have one, cyka blyat! pic.twitter.com/gXBZVdK2RY
– Ivan Ramirez (@ivan_r) August 30, 2020
Then came the charlatans, scammers and the spam of a lifetime. Two different people, separated by several days, wrote to me claiming to be “renowned writers” looking for information for his new book. I humored them for a couple of messages to see what the ultimate goal was, though eventually both them and I ended up boring each other. I suspect that they would seek to obtain personal data and/or copies of personal documents, although I will remain in doubt… until the third party arrives, I suppose.
They did not take long to arrive nigerian scammers or, at least, the 2020 version of the same old scam: the promise of a reward after helping to free up a large sum of money. The scam has circulated by mail, jumped to social networks and is now in instant messaging, on Telegram. Renewed or die.
Nigerian scammers switch to Telegram pic.twitter.com/893SX9UzQB
– Ivan Ramirez (@ivan_r) August 30, 2020
From there, the jump to porn was inevitable. Suddenly, my Telegram profile was irresistible to the opposite sex, despite having the profile picture hidden from strangers. Women from all over the world wanted to meet me: from Uzbekistan to Italy, Russia and any other corner of the planet.
Every time I open the archived chats, I don’t know what I’m going to find. Sometimes there are clueless people, jokers or directly pornographic photos, dick pic included.
Not only that, but some of them they started the chat by sending me suggestive photos or directly naked. Of course, they weren’t just women or people pretending to be women: after several decades surfing the net, that’s how I received my first dick pic.
Today they sent me the first dick pic :'( pic.twitter.com/0Mcc9ym11A
– Ivan Ramirez (@ivan_r) July 2, 2020
Not all my dear strangers were malicious. Some of them clearly they had mistaken for a person or they were simply looking to chat with whoever was on the other side. Since I started receiving the messages, without a doubt the most repeated is a simple “Hello” or, in Russian, “Привет”.
three recent messages
Receiving a message from strangers from time to time is not a problem. The problem is the number of messages, which does not stop rising. Today I had 14 conversations from strangers, and the average for the last few days is about 10 conversations a day, including attempts to start a secret chat and voice memos that I’m afraid to reproduce.
The obvious solution is to ignore the messages and go on with your life, although it would not be until Telegram 6.3 that the option to auto-archive stranger conversations. It is a very useful option, which serves as a kind of anti-spam filter although, like the anti-spam mail filter, it is convenient to check from time to time that an interesting conversation has not been eaten. That’s when Telegram becomes a box of chocolates, as Forrest Gump would say.
A quick search on social networks shows us that my case is far from isolated. Other people complain about the conversations of strangers on Telegram. It doesn’t happen to everyone, although it happens to whoever happens to it.
where do these people come from
Now, where do all these people come from? The answer depends on what kind of people we are talking about. Spam, scammers and those who try to send viruses via Telegram They probably have some automated system that creates conversations with automatically generated phone numbers or usernames. For example, this virus attempt I received a few days ago:
No thanks pic.twitter.com/RcoCTEhwwD
– Ivan Ramirez (@ivan_r) January 14, 2021
However, for better or for worse, most strangers who talk to me on Telegram are not scammers, but clueless people. People who want to talk to their friend or cousin Iván, and end up talking to me. Why does this happen?
The answer is telegram global search, which mixes own contacts with Telegram accounts that have an active username, like mine. If you have a popular name as your username, you are more likely that someone will try to find your brother-in-law and end up opening a chat to you instead.
Telegram’s global search mixes own contacts and accounts with username
and telegram, usernames are public and, after activating them, anyone can find you and open a conversation with you. In this way, one of the main advantages of Telegram over Signal or WhatsApp, being able to use it without revealing your phone number, becomes a double-edged sword: in exchange, you open the door to strangers or, at least, reveal the door location.
The Telegram username allows you to avoid giving your phone to other people to talk to you, but in exchange anyone can find you in the Telegram search
The difference from Messenger, Instagram or Twitter, in Telegram there are no chat requests. In Telegram’s rather extensive privacy options, you can choose who can find you using your phone number, but not by username. That is, if you have a username, anyone can open a chat and send you any nonsense. It will be archived, yes, but the nonsense remains there.
The fact that Telegram automatically archives messages from strangers helps a lot, although it is still a patch. Archived messages are not automatically deleted, so sooner or later you’ll end up going in there and finding whatever they sent you. In apps with chat requests, at least you’ll only see the first message.
What can you do to avoid it
The chats of strangers on Telegram can arrive in two ways: via phone number or, most likely, via username. The first case can be easily avoided from Telegram’s privacy settings.
If they are adding you through the phone number, you can avoid it from the Telegram settings. Go into Privacy & Security, tap on Phone number and in the section Who can find me by my number?, change it to my contacts.
If they are finding you through username, you have several options. The first one is to delete your username or change it to something unusual, such as a nickname (although you will have to change your name as well, as it is used in searches). It is an effective option, although it leaves a bad taste in the mouth, because perhaps you got a good username by registering it years ago, when Telegram was not as popular as it is today.
Of course, you can also leave everything as it is, ignore messages and from time to time enter Archived chats to do cleaning (or not, this is optional). It’s what I’ve been doing for more than a year, although what started as a funny curiosity has turned into something tedious.
You have two options: either delete your username or arm yourself with patience to ignore the messages that come to you
There are two settings that will help you make it a bit more bearable. The first, and the most important, is Archive and mute, in the Privacy and security settings, which automatically archives new chats from strangers. The second, in the notifications section, is to uncheck Include muted chats, to prevent it from counting these chats as unread, so you can more easily ignore them.
What Telegram could do
As we have seen, as a user there is no really satisfactory option to end the chats of strangers on Telegram without giving up anything in return, but it shouldn’t be difficult for Telegram to fix the problem in a future update. These are some of the alternatives that could be incorporated:
Include message requests, like on Messenger, Instagram, or Twitter. If you do not accept the request, they cannot contact you.
Add a privacy setting on profile visibility, as in Facebook or the adjustment of the phone number, in Telegram. In this way, you would only be visible in searches if you wish.
All is not lost, and Telegram is one of the applications that includes more new features in each new version. The only thing left for us is to wait and, in the meantime, be patient, disable the username or practice Russian. Я выбрал последний вариант.