Telegram developers presented another functional update, in particular, it became possible to use the messenger even without a phone number and to set a global timer for automatic deletion of messages in all chats.

Registration without a SIM card

The main innovation is registration without a SIM card. In this case, anonymous numbers available on the proprietary blockchain platform Fragment are used for login. In Telegram, without too much modesty, they talk about a “new era of privacy”, but it remains to be seen how well the team has thought out effective protection against abuse. Potentially, this is a real find for fraudsters and spammers on the platform, which remains almost the main channel for news consumption in Ukraine. In addition, the other day it was reported that Telegram, at the request of a court in India, disclosed the personal data of users accused of copyright infringement – here it is important to understand that there is no complete privacy and confidentiality in the modern Internet.

Global auto-delete timer

Self-destruction of messages without a trace (again, nothing disappears from the Internet without a trace) appeared in Telegram back in 2013, and now, as part of the expansion of control over personal data and message history, the developers have added a global auto-delete timer for automatic cleaning of all new chats.

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You can extend the auto-delete settings to any of the chats from the new menu in Settings > Privacy & Security > Timer Delete. Additionally, this setting will automatically apply to all new user chats and all new groups. Setting up auto-deletion has become easier in small private groups, now the timer can be turned on by any member who has permission to change the name and photo of the group.

Topics 2.0

Telegram’s November update added chat threads for organizing discussions in large groups, and now the feature, which is a reimagining of the once-popular online forums, has been updated to version 2.0, now available for groups of 100 or more members. For convenience, chats with topics are opened in two-column mode, which provides quick access to chats. To jump to the latest branch directly from the chat list, tap the new button with the latest message.

The topic “General questions” has been added to the group. It stores the history of messages before the group transitions to topic mode; all service messages are received here. This topic is available to all members—if they want to view previous posts—but admins can rename it or hide it from the main list.

To make it easier to navigate the list, the developers have introduced color marking – the counters of unread messages in previously viewed topics are made brighter, and those that have not yet been looked at are lighter and more inconspicuous.

Another opportunity for lovers of organization and order: groups can now have up to 5 pinned topics, and each topic can have an unlimited number of pinned messages.

Only group admins can enable branches in group settings and control who is allowed to create and manage branches in permissions.

Other improvements

Other improvements include:

• a new aggressive mode of automatic spam filtering based on algorithms of Telegram’s own development for groups with 200+ members (report any false positives directly from the Recent Activities tab);

• temporary QR codes for quick exchange of contacts with others (so owners of public pseudonyms can maintain anonymity);

• search for emoji by keywords on iOS, which previously appeared on Android;

• the Storage Usage page on Android has been redesigned as it was previously done on iOS – detailing space usage by individual chat and removing certain types of media (photos, videos, music and files) from individual chats;

• support for opening Lighthouses in third-party mapping programs on Android;
• new interactive (with animation support) emojis and 10 additional themed emoji packs for Premium users.

The day before, Pavlo Durov said that Telegram had collected the first million Premium subscribers in five months.

Telegram Premium collected a million subscribers in five months — Pavlo Durov promises more new features in 2023