Bugs and Suggestions

Disagree. This doesn't make sense.

First of all, Telegram doesn't track you, your name, usernames or the groups you are part of. And even if they do, they will delete the data shortly after.

Third party bots may track you, but it's up to you to decide whether to let them track you or not: https://telegram.org/privacy#6-bot-messages. Bots will get your public account data only when you start them or participate in a group they are part of.

However, bots should ask you for your permission before they access your data or you make it available to them: https://telegram.org/privacy#6-4-bots-are-not-maintained-by-telegram. If you know a bot is tracking you and you didn't give it your permission, assert your rights and report that bot.

Last but not least, your proposed solutions make no sense and are impossible to implement.

Mario Apr 28, 2021

Deleted Account

First of all, I never said that Telegram was the one tracking me. I was talking about people outside Telegram: like me, you and an oppressive government ;)
(btw neither me and you can say with 100% certainty that it's tracking us or not but since we use this app we both trust in it...)

"Bots will get your public account data only when you start them or participate in a group they are part of."
Really? So explain me how this bot can tell in which public group people are without having to joining in the chat: @tgscanrobot :P
And moreover: if I disseminate userbots/bots in Telegram groups I can easily get a stocked database. Not mention to the fact that the same user could have access to the people ID.
The worst thing is that even after deleting the account people can still see the user ID related to ALL the messages sent by them (including the 'join announcement' you can see in the groups)

"They should ask you for your permission before they access your data or you make it available to them."
Which data you're talking about?
User ID can be obtained really easily and I've never seen a bot asking the permission for it. Adding the fact that even users can get user IDs (with no permission).

"Last but not least, your proposed solutions make no sense and are impossible to implement."
Could you argue argue why?

Deleted Account Apr 29, 2021

Mario

Since you weren't mentioning any entity, I made the most generic examples I could think of: Telegram itself and third party bots. My bad.

I only mentioned what Telegram's Privacy Policy says about your user data and bots. Of course people will always be able to see your public account info if you have an username or are in a group they're part of. Bots are also able to do that (using MTProto), and the privacy policy clearly indicates they can do so (https://telegram.org/privacy#6-3-what-data-bots-receive, first paragraph).

You are not forced to use your real name on Telegram. If you really care about your privacy and you are afraid of being tracked, there are a couple added things you could do: remove your username, use a nickname and not your real name, only join groups created by people you trust the most. There's no real way to prevent people from tracking your data if your account is public or part of a public group.

Once you delete your account you won't be able to edit or delete its messages. You should delete them before deleting your account, since you can always delete your messages before leaving a group: https://telegram.org/privacy#10-2-messages.

User IDs are fundamental. Without them you wouldn't be able to private message other users, identify them in groups, add them to your contacts or interact with them in any other way: Telegram's ecosystem needs them to work, and it cannot be changed at this point. Your ID will be the first thing a bot will see about you, how could he message you otherwise?

Talking about your proposed solutions:

1. Each account has an ID that allows you to distinguish it from other accounts. Removing IDs from deleted accounts would break many things. Most importantly, you would not be able to distinguish two separated chats with deleted accounts, retrieve and delete old messages or simply remove them from groups.

2. This proposed solution is chaotic, expensive, really complicated and wouldn't work with the Telegram ecosystem (because of usernames and user mentions). If you consider how many resources would be involved, this is certainly impossible.
There are currently over 1.8 billion account on Telegram (active accounts + deleted accounts). Consider that anybody can join a maximum of 500 supergroups/channels and an infinite number of normal groups. Moreover, you can join and leave an infinite amount of groups.
In an optimistic scenario, if you consider the current user amount, this would mean that 1.8*10^9 * 500 = 900 BILLION different IDs are mapped to 1.8 billion users. Since Telegram is growing day by day at an insane speed, this number would increase exponentially. Do you have any idea how many resources and how much computation power would be needed to do this?

Mario Apr 29, 2021

"only join groups created by people you trust the most"
That's really simple to say but extremely difficult to do, especially if you're under an oppressive government and you want to communicate with people outside of it.
The first layer of security must be provided by Telegram.

"You should delete them before deleting your account, since you can always delete your messages before leaving a group"
1) Telegram allows you to delete 100 message per time (selecting them one-by-one), that makes the procedure extremely slow and discouraging.
2) What about 'joining announcement ' messages and groups in which I'm banned (or groups that for any reason I have no more access to)?
3)Telegram Privacy Policy [1] says: "In supergroups and channels, deleting a message removes it for all participants." What about 'normal groups'?

[1] https://telegram.org/privacy#10-2-messages

1) If deleting user IDs (after the account is deleted) could break the working of Telegram, they can at least hide it for everyone except Telegram itself. So users and bots could never see them.

2) Indeed, I said "I don't know if this could be implemented but...". Currently, only a Telegram developer could give us an answer.

Joshua May 25, 2021

I agree that this can be a privacy problem. But this problem is not solvable by Telegram in an acceptable way. Telegram had to be built competely different from the beginning to do this (userprofiles, mentions etc)
One solution that I can imagine: Telegram could allow each phone number to create maybe three accounts. The process would be: Create first account, then from there tell Telegram to create your sub accounts. They can then be chosen by the normal account switcher already present in the Telegram apps. This would be realtively easy to realize, would not break things and would raise the amount of privacy.
Another solution which I would suggest is to just create a few telegram accounts and split different matters wisely. But your proposed solution is garbage - sorry.

Mario Aug 27, 2021

Joshua

"But this problem is not solvable by Telegram in an acceptable way.
Telegram had to be built competely different from the beginning to do
this (userprofiles, mentions etc)"

Not having the sources we cannot be sure about this, maybe it can be easily solved from the server side. This is just another reason to free the sources of it: https://bugs.telegram.org/c/728

Your idea is good, but is not an absolute solution*...the issues remain it only tries to reduce them.

*it has been suggested here: https://bugs.telegram.org/c/6644

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