Ever since WhatsApp updated its data-sharing terms, confused users have misunderstood the change and started looking for alternatives immediately. While there is a number of apps for messaging instantly, Telegram and Signal were highlighted by the migrating community.
While Signal is ultimately the best one for privacy, it lacked user-friendliness. Thus, many have settled with WhatsApp’s close alternative, Telegram. And if you’re one of those, learn how to set self-destructing messages to make your conversations more secure.
Self-Destructing Messages are indeed needed for any privacy-focused messengers. Once set, they will destruct the message (make them disappear) from the chat as per the time set, right after the recipient seeing it. This is available in Telegram’s Secret Chat, and can be activated as below;
Also Read- How to Set Two-factor Authentication in Telegram
How to Send Self-Destructing Messages in Telegram?
- Choose a contact you wanted to make a secret chat with.
- Opening the chat, click on the contact’s icon (profile photo) at the top to view his/her profile.
- Here, open settings by tapping the three dots at the top right corner.
- Select Start Secret Chat, which prompts with a confirmation dialogue box asking to initiate the secret chat.
- Proceeding with Start will open a new chat of the same contact, where conversing anything from hereon in that chat will show separately from the regular chat of the same contact.
- Here, open the chat settings at the top right corner (three dots) and click on Set self-destruct timer, which allows you to set the desired time for destructing the seen messages.
That’s it. It should be noted that activating this feature from your side will only destruct the messages sent from your side, but not the ones received. For them to disappear automatically, ask your partner to activate the same feature from his side. Also, you can edit the desired time to destruct whenever you want.
Self-Destructing Messages in Telegram’s Secret Chat are aided with other similar features to keep your chats more private. These include encrypting the chats end-to-end, which isn’t available by default in regular chats. Also, it restricts forwarding messages, taking screenshots, and leave no trace on Telegram’s servers.
