Telegram, still far from the figures of its rival WhatsApp, continues to make its way among digital users and already has more than 500 million active users around the world. Today we tell you how to have a conversation through Telegram making sure that only we, you and the person with whom you are chatting, are the only ones to be able to read said conversation , without the possibility of anyone forwarding the phrases you exchange and with self-destruct ability after secret chat is finished.
Normally, we don’t care if the other person takes a screenshot of the conversation or shows it to someone else. Sometimes, however, you may send messages, photos, or even videos that you don’t want the other person to have forever, or worse, take screenshots and show them to other people. That’s what the secret chat exists for.
How to open a secret chat
- Open the Telegram application
- Find the contact you want to chat with
- Click on their name and click on the three inverted dots
- Select “secret chat”
- Schedule the self-destruction of messages on the clock icon (from 1 second to a week long).
There is another alternative way
- Open Telegram
- Tap the floating action button in the lower right.
- Select New Secret Chat.
- Choose a contact.
- Secret chat is now available
The auto-destroy message feature doesn’t work in normal Telegram chats. You have to be in a secret chat to activate this self destruct timer functionality. As you can see, this feature will not be set by default ; you have to enable it or the messages will not self-destruct.
You can make the messages last from a second to a week . The timer will not start until the other person sees the message. When the message you sent has two green check marks, then the countdown begins.
Therefore, if you do not want to leave any traces and pretend that the conversation never took place and that only those involved are aware of such talk, we recommend using this secret chat. If you want to talk in the secret chat but not delete the messages, you can always disable this feature and the messages you send will not self-destruct.
Secret chat in the desktop app
As you already know, the messages are end-to-end encrypted like normal chats; however, unlike lifelong chats, messages are not stored anywhere other than the recipient’s device. This also has some repercussions. Because messages are not stored on Telegram’s servers, you cannot access a secret chat from the Telegram desktop application, the web application, or even any other device. Once deleted from the device, you will never be able to recover these messages, although this is precisely the goal of a secret chat, right?
We remind you that Telegram blocks the screen capture functionality in secret chats and that they are not stored on Telegram’s servers either.
