Telegram has added new privacy features: you can now hide your phone number in groups. Here's how to do it
Telegram is one of the most beloved messaging apps in the world. The reasons are many: it is fast, secure, can be used safely from your smartphone, but also from your PC and allows you to converse with your contacts, even sending very heavy files without problems. But this application is most famous for its privacy settings.
This is an issue that is so dear to the developers, ever since they decided to launch the application in 2013. They were the ones who brought encryption, secret chats or login passwords to the world of instant messaging, before WhatsApp and Messenger. Telegram's latest update a few days ago adds another piece to that path. In fact, it is now possible to make visible an information for a group chat, for example that of classmates, but not in another, that of the gym. We're talking in this case about the phone number: from now you can decide whether to make it visible, and especially to whom.
Telegram: hiding the phone number in a group
To hide your phone number from the members of a Telegram group follow this path. Go to Settings > Privacy and security > Phone number. Here, you can check three different entries: All, None or My Contacts. Let's emphasize that users who already have your phone number in their address book will also see it on Telegram. While those you added using your "username" will continue to see only that.
Inside the Phone Number section, after choosing who can see it, you can add Exceptions, i.e. users and groups. So if you don't want to have your number seen in some groups, you just need to select "All" at the top, and add chats in the part below related to exceptions. After selecting groups or users you need to click Confirm and you're done.
Who can see your phone number?
To sum up, you can now chat in groups without your phone number being available to all members. This is a nice jump for Telegram, in fact often within these chats there are strangers or acquaintances with whom you don't want to share such a confidential information as your phone contact.