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How to Set Your Telegram Account to Self-Destruct
pubsub.dcentralisedmedia.com / LifehackerAustralia · Friday, 5 February, 2021 - 20:00 · 1 minute
Kerboom. That’s the sound of your Telegram account automatically deleting itself. Honestly, I wish this feature was baked into more services. Wouldn’t it be great to have an old email account you never used disappear once you haven’t logged in for two years’ straight?
Telegram’s self-destruct sequence normally starts at six months’ worth of inactivity. As Telegram describes :
Telegram is not a commercial organisation, and we value our disk space greatly. If you stop using Telegram and don’t come online for at least six months, your account will be deleted along with all messages, media, contacts and every other piece of data you store in the Telegram cloud.
However, six months is just a default. You can edit that setting to a shorter or longer time period if you want a little extra security — as in, you want your account gone after a month or you don’t trust yourself and would prefer to have a little extra leeway before Telegram deletes everything on your behalf.
To get started, launch Telegram ( iOS , Android ) and pull up its settings by tapping in the lower-right corner. Next, tap on Privacy and Security, which should launch a screen that looks like this:
Tap on “If Away For” under the Automatically Delete My Account section and change it to whatever value you prefer:
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1 month
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3 months
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6 months
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12 months
And while you’re here, set up two-step verification on your account. Even though you might not have an account if you let it linger for too long, at least your inactive account will be secure for the short (or long) time period it exists. As part of Telegram’s 2FA setup, you can create a secondary password that one has to use when logging in on a new device in addition to receiving a code via SMS. That’s pretty secure, if you ask me.
The post How to Set Your Telegram Account to Self-Destruct appeared first on Lifehacker Australia .
