As we saw when WhatsApp introduced its now infamous blue check marks, some people really value privacy and control in their communication apps. Now Telegram, a competitor, has been updated with what it calls ‘Privacy 2.0‘, which aims to give you more control over who sees what information.
Telegram on iOS and Android now gives you the ability to control exactly who sees your ‘last seen‘ time stamp. In WhatsApp, you can turn it on and off, but now with Telegram you can choose who sees it. There are three simple options – share it with everybody, my contacts and no one.
There are also two new options – Always Share With and Never Share With. This means that you can add exceptions like ‘only share with my contacts and these people’, or ‘never share with my contacts except these people’.
The second part of Telegram’s new privacy drive is ‘Self-destructing Accounts’. By default, if you don¡t use your account for six months, Telegram will delete your account along with all messages and data it holds. You can change the self-destruct period from one month up to a year. Telegram says it is doing this so users feel safer that the app isn’t hanging on to your data indefinitely.
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