Introduction

If you’ve switched from WhatsApp to Telegram to safeguard your chat privacy, you’ll want to know how to remove chats from both your smartphone and Telegram’s servers. This isn’t exactly as simple as you may imagine.

How Telegram Stores Your Conversations

On Telegram, there are two sorts of conversations: cloud chats and secret chats. Cloud conversations (including public groups or channels) exist between you and other Telegram users but are not end-to-end encrypted. Secret conversations are never uploaded to a server and are sent and received using end-to-end encryption.

To preserve your privacy, Telegram claims that cloud conversations are “held fully encrypted and the encryption keys in each instance are stored in multiple additional data centers in various nations.” Even if your conversations are encrypted on a server or in an app, they may be intercepted without end-to-end encryption (where only the sender and receiver can decode messages).

Cloud chats, on the other hand, are (as the name indicates) kept on the cloud. Telegram may now be used on several devices since you can quickly download chats and message history.

Telegram Messages Can Be Deleted

Anyone may erase a message from a one-on-one conversation from any device as of Telegram 5.5 (published in March 2019). This covers messages you’ve sent as well as ones you’ve received. The message will be removed from all devices, including the Telegram server, and there are no time constraints.

Multiple-participant cloud conversations function in a different way. You can only erase messages you’ve sent from everyone’s devices 48 hours after they’ve been sent. You may still remove a message after this, but it will stay on the server as well as the recipients’ devices. If the receivers also remove the communication, it is permanently lost.

Tap and hold a message to erase it, then choose Delete.

You may then choose “Delete for myself” or “Delete for everyone,” depending on who you’re speaking with.

One rather perplexing restriction to be aware of is that if you or a receiver are using a version of Telegram before to 5.5 in a one-on-one conversation, you’ll be confined to the same 48-hour timeframe and limitations that apply to cloud chats.

If you wish to remove all copies of a message from Telegram’s servers, including the receiver’s copy, you’ll need to ask the recipient to delete it from their device as well.

• Swipe right on the chat in the conversations list and choose Erase to delete the whole conversation. You’ll be asked whether you want to remove individual messages or the whole chat.

Push Notifications Should Not Be Ignored

The ability to remove a message from a recipient’s device seems like a lifesaver, similar to Gmail’s unsend tool, but it’s not nearly the panacea that many users hope for. Because push notifications are handled differently, this is the case.

If you send a message to a buddy who has Telegram’s push notifications turned on (a messaging app without them is useless), your message will still display in their notifications. Most mobile devices remove alerts after they’ve been pressed, however the majority of incoming messages are still saved.

While there will be no trace of your communication in Telegram, a user may snap a screenshot of their receiving alerts and save it eternally.

How to Delete All of Your Previous Messages

Do you want to get rid of every message you’ve ever sent? You may even erase your whole Telegram account as a last resort. However, if you’ve transmitted critical messages including personal information to anybody, you may need to ask them to erase their copies of those messages from their accounts in order for Telegram’s servers to be cleared.

Do you want to be alone? Make use of secret chats

Cloud chats are handy, and they represent little danger for humdrum conversations like what you’re cooking for supper. However, if you’re serious about safeguarding your privacy, Telegram’s private conversations are the way to go. To start a secret chat, touch on a recipient’s name at the top of a discussion, then tap More, then Start Secret Chat.