Telegram Privacy Policy EN English Deutsch Bahasa Indonesia Bahasa Melayu Español Français Italiano Nederlands O‘zbek Polski Português (Brasil) Türkçe Беларуская Русский Українська Қазақша العربية فارسی 한국어 Follow on X Home FAQ Apps API Safety Telegram Privacy Policy 1. Introduction This Privacy Policy sets out how we, Telegram Messenger Inc. (“Telegram”), use and protect your personal data that you provide to us, or that is otherwise obtained or generated by us, in connection with your use of our cloud-based messaging services (the “Services”). For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ refers to Telegram, and ‘you’ refers to you, the user of the Services. 1.1 Privacy Principles Telegram has two fundamental principles when it comes to collecting and processing private data: We don't use your data to show you ads. We only store the data that Telegram needs to function as a secure and feature-rich messaging service. 1.2. Terms of Service This Privacy Policy forms part of our Terms of Service, which describes the terms under which you use our Services and which are available at https://telegram.org/tos. This Privacy Policy should therefore be read in conjunction with those terms. 1.3. Table of Contents This Privacy Policy explains the following: the legal basis for processing your personal data; what personal data we may collect from you; how we keep your personal data safe; what we may use your personal data for; who your personal data may be shared with; and your rights regarding your personal data. 1.4. EEA Representative If you live in a country in the European Economic Area (EEA), the Services are provided by Telegram, which for the purposes of applicable data protection legislation is the data controller responsible for your personal data when you use our Services. However, as Telegram is located outside the EEA, we have designated a third party, European Data Protection Office (EDPO), as our representative pursuant to Article 27 of the GDPR. You can direct to EDPO any of your GDPR-related queries: by using EDPO’s online request form at https://edpo.com/telegram-gdpr-data-request/ or by writing to EDPO at Avenue Huart Hamoir 71, 1030 Brussels, Belgium. 2. Legal Ground for Processing Your Personal Data We process your personal data on the ground that such processing is necessary to further our legitimate interests (including: (1) providing effective and innovative Services to our users; and (2) to detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud or security issues in respect of our provision of Services), unless those interests are overridden by your interest or fundamental rights and freedoms that require protections of personal data. 3. What Personal Data We Use 3.1. Basic Account Data Telegram is a communication service. You provide your mobile number and basic account data (which may include profile name, profile picture and about information) to create a Telegram account. To make it easier for your contacts and other people to reach you and recognize who you are, the screen name you choose, your profile pictures, and your username (should you choose to set one) on Telegram are always public. We don't want to know your real name, gender, age or what you like. We do not require your screen name to be your real name. Note that users who have you in their contacts will see you by the name they saved and not by your screen name. This way your mother can have the public name 'Johnny Depp' while appearing as 'Mom' to you and as 'Boss' to her underlings at work (or the other way around, depending on how these relationships are structured). 3.1.1. Optional Data You can add your birthday (with or without the year) to your Telegram profile if you wish to do so. You can granularly choose which users are able to see it on your profile (by default, your Contacts), and they will be shown a reminder on the day. We may use data about your age to determine your eligibility for accessing age-specific content. Telegram Business subscribers can add a fixed location and a list of opening hours to their profile, to help clients identify and engage with their business more efficiently on Telegram. If you choose to add it to your profile, this information is always public. 3.2. Your Email Address When you enable 2-step-verification for your account or store documents using the Telegram Passport feature, you can opt to set up a password recovery email. This address will only be used to send you a password recovery code if you forget it. That's right: no marketing or “we miss you” bullshit. From September 2022, we may ask some users to provide an email address to receive login codes via email instead of SMS (with an option to use 'Sign in with Google' / 'Sign in with Apple'). In this case, we will receive an email address which will be stored separately from the recovery email, and will only be used to send you authentication codes when you log in to your account. The login email address will be stored until it is changed or the account is deleted. 3.3. Your Messages 3.3.1. Cloud Chats Telegram is a cloud service. We store messages, photos, videos and documents from your cloud chats on our servers so that you can access your data from any of your devices anytime without having to rely on third-party backups. All data is stored heavily encrypted and the encryption keys in each case are stored in several other data centers in different jurisdictions. This way local engineers or physical intruders cannot get access to user data. 3.3.2. Secret Chats Secret chats use end-to-end encryption. This means that all data is encrypted with a key that only you and the recipient know. There is no way for us or anybody else without direct access to your device to learn what content is being sent in those messages. We do not store your secret chats on our servers. We also do not keep any logs for messages in secret chats, so after a short period of time we no longer know who or when you messaged via secret chats. For the same reasons secret chats are not available in the cloud — you can only access those messages from the device they were sent to or from. 3.3.3. Media in Secret Chats When you send photos, videos or files via secret chats, before being uploaded, each item is encrypted with a separate key, not known to the server. This key and the file’s location are then encrypted again, this time with the secret chat’s key — and sent to your recipient. They can then download and decipher the file. This means that the file is technically on one of Telegram’s servers, but it looks like a piece of random indecipherable garbage to everyone except for you and the recipient. We don’t know what this random data stands for and we have no idea which particular chat it belongs to. We periodically purge this random data from our servers to save disk space. 3.3.4. Public Chats In addition to private messages, Telegram also supports public channels and public groups. All public chats are cloud chats (see section 3.3.1 above). Like everything on Telegram, the data you post in public communities is encrypted, both in storage and in transit — but everything you post in public will be accessible to everyone. 3.3.5. Paid Posts As of June 2024, creators are able to offer paid access to specific channel posts by accepting Telegram Stars. When users pay to unlock a channel post, a permanent copy is created which resides in the parties' transaction history. This copy remains accessible even if the post is later deleted or either party loses access to the channel. 3.4. Phone Number and Contacts Telegram uses phone numbers as unique identifiers so that it is easy for you to switch from SMS and other messaging apps and retain your social graph. We ask your permission before syncing your contacts. We store your up-to-date contacts in order to notify you as soon as one of your contacts signs up for Telegram and to properly display names in notifications. We only need the number and name (first and last) for this to work and store no other data about your contacts. Our automatic algorithms can also use anonymized sets of phone numbers to calculate the approximate number of potential contacts an unregistered phone number may have on Telegram. When you open the 'Invite friends' interface, we display the resulting statistics next to your contacts to give you an idea of who could benefit most from joining Telegram. You can always stop syncing contacts or delete them from our servers in Settings > Privacy & Security > Data Settings. If you are using Android, Telegram will ask you for permission to access your phone call logs (READ_CALL_LOG). If you grant this permission, Telegram will be able verify your account by transmitting a phone call instead of asking you to enter a code. Telegram uses this permission only to confirm receipt of the confirmation call by verifying the number in the call log. 3.5. Location Data If you share a location in a chat, this location data is treated like other messages in cloud or secret chats respectively. If you share your Live Location in any chat or turn on ’Make Myself Visible’ in People Nearby, Telegram will use your data to display your location to those users with whom you are sharing it, even when the app is closed – for as long as you keep these optional features activated. 3.6. Cookies The only cookies we use are those to operate and provide our Services on the web. We do not use cookies for profiling or advertising. The cookies we use are small text files that allow us to provide and customize our Services, and in doing so provide you with an enhanced user experience. Your browser should allow you to control these cookies, including whether or not to accept them and how to remove them. You may choose to block cookies with your web browser, however, if you do disable these cookies you will not be able to log in to Telegram Web. 4. Keeping Your Personal Data Safe 4.1. Storing Data If you signed up for Telegram from the UK or the EEA, your data is stored in data centers in the Netherlands. These are third-party provided data centers in which Telegram rents a designated space. However, the servers and networks that sit inside these data centers and on which your personal data is stored are owned by Telegram. As such, we do not share your personal data with such data centers. All data is stored heavily encrypted so that local Telegram engineers or physical intruders cannot get access. 4.2. End-to-End Encrypted Data Your messages, media and files from secret chats (see section 3.3.2 above), as well as the contents of your calls and the data you store in your Telegram Passport are processed only on your device and on the device of your recipient. Before this data reaches our servers, it is encrypted with a key known only to you and the recipient. While Telegram servers will handle this end-to-end encrypted data to deliver it to the recipient – or store it in the case of Telegram Passport data, we have no ways of deciphering the actual information. In this case, we neither store nor process your personal data, rather we store and process random sequences of symbols that have no meaning without the keys which we don’t have. 4.3. Retention Unless stated otherwise in this Privacy Policy, the personal data that you provide us will only be stored for as long as it is necessary for us to fulfill our obligations in respect of the provision of the Services. 5. Processing Your Personal Data 5.1. Our Services Telegram is a cloud service. We will process your data to deliver your cloud chat history, including messages, media and files, to any devices of your choosing without a need for you to use third-party backups or cloud storage. 5.2. Safety and Security Telegram supports massive communities which we have to police against abuse and Terms of Service violations. Telegram also has more tha…