This is the most important step, as your phone number is your primary identifier on Telegram.
Best Practice: Select “Nobody.” This ensures your actual phone number is never visible on your profile to anyone, regardless of whether they have your number saved.
Alternative: “My Contacts” if you’re comfortable only your saved contacts seeing it. Avoid “Everybody” for privacy.
“Who can find me by my number?” (This option appears if you choose “Nobody” above)
Best Practice: Select “My Contacts.” This ensures that only people you have saved in your phone’s address book (and who also have your number) can find your Telegram profile by searching for your number.
Alternative: If you want extreme isolation and prefer to be found only by username, you can select “Nobody” here as well. Avoid “Everybody” for privacy.
Always Use a Username
A username allows people to find and contact you without needing your phone number.
Usage: Share your username (e.g., @YourPrivacyHandle) instead of your phone number for professional contacts, online communities, or telegram number database anyone you don’t know personally. This completely decouples your Telegram identity from your phone number for those interactions.
3. Control Contact Syncing (and Delete Old Data)
Decide if you want Telegram to access your phone’s address book.
“Sync Contacts” Toggle:
Best Practice: Keep it mobile numbers in marketing automation OFF if you want maximum privacy and don’t want your phone’s address book uploaded to Telegram’s servers. This means you’ll add contacts manually by username.
If ON: This is for convenience to automatically belgium numbers find friends. Understand that it uploads numbers and names from your phone to Telegram’s servers.