Telegram - New Privacy Settings

In the Beta version of Telegram for macOS, new privacy settings have been introduced.

Who Can Message Me

This setting allows you to choose which groups of users can send you personal messages: “Everyone” or only “Contacts and Premium“

Well I’m not a Beta user but that would be insufficient to test this feature anyway. Because it is available for Premium users only. Thanks to giveaways I won lately, I can employ it once it is pushed to stable public release.

In my opinion, this feature should be primary and available to all users regardless of premium, for its privacy centric nature. With this feature enabled Telegram gives an impression that others need to be a) either your existing contact or b) a premium user. Much similar to how LinkedIn disallows messaging to non-connections.

I remember back in the day many users on Telegram used to have userbots deployed on Heroku to block un-invited DMs. With block-dms plugins enabled in a user bot if a non-contact DMs you, he is warned for n times, and exhausting those limits would ban the guy right away. To approve the un-invited DMs a user simply responds back.

Userbots are still around on Telegram but comparatively low in number because Heroku & Telegram were reported to be blocking the userbots. Only those with personal VPS tend to afford the userbots now.

Note that this will be an option for premium users & they can toggle it on their will.

Other updates that are in beta at the moment involves:

Hide Message Reading Time

If a user can see your last seen time, they will now also see the time when you read their messages in a private chat. However, the new setting allows you to hide your reading time of their messages from such partner. When this option is activated, you also won’t see when your conversation partner reads your messages.

Self destructing Video messages

In the upcoming updates, it will be possible to send video messages that can be viewed only once. Previously, a similar feature was introduced for voice messages.

Additionally, an option to pause the recording of both voice and, likely, video messages will be introduced. We can expect these updates dropping soon because as per trend or convention Telegram releases new updates in the last week of every month, but there are also few inconsistencies with the trend.

If you are on Telegram, how do you think this new privacy feature will affect you & your experience with other users on Telegram? Please feel free to share your thoughts.

This is Day 8 of #100DaysToOffload

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